The church and Soviet state security agencies: their part in the battle of Leningrad (1941-1944)

The attack of Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union showed the USSR leaders that facing the threat of an external enemy required maximum consolidation of all forces. However, throughout the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet state security agencies treated the clergy and religious people as potential adversaries, keeping them under constant control. The main goal “following the church-sectarian line” was “recruiting valuable agents capable of uncovering organized anti-Soviet activists and foreign intelligence agents among churchmen and sectarians.” Of particular interest to security officers (Chekists) were the priests who happened to be on the territory of the Leningrad region occupied by Hitler’s soldiers. However, the patriotic mission of the Russian Orthodox Church and the almost complete lack of atheistic propaganda in that period contributed to the fact that the majority of the USSR population did not perceive religion as something alien and harmful. A lot of Chekists realized that too. Many of them believed “work” “following the church lines” to be something completely needless and even harmful. But the concerned departments of the Soviet KGB were eliminated only in 1955.