The ROC and the KGB: The story of a “prodigal cohabitation”. On the involvement of the Moscow Patriarchate in cooperation with the communist special services and the destruction of the Church opposition in the USSR

Abstract

The ROC and the KGB: The story of a “prodigal cohabitation”. On the involvement of the Moscow Patriarchate in cooperation with the communist special services and the destruction of the Church opposition in the USSR This article analyses the events and processes of the 1920s-1980s in subordinating the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) to the Soviet secret services. The author examines the events of the 1920s when, with the intervention of the OGPU, an intra-church coup was organised in the ROC and a ‘Provisional Synod’ of Metropolitan Sergei Stragorodsky was established, which in 1927 proclaimed full loyalty to the communist regime.