The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. These case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era. These are the stories of the resilience and creative agency of religious believers in times when their faith in God was considered a legal offense. These issues are addressed through an in-depth analysis of previously untapped archival sources from the Soviet secret police archives and eyewitness testimonies.

Tatiana Vagramenko is senior postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork.
Nadezhda Beliakova is scholar at risk at the University of Bielefeld and at the Institute for the Academic Study of Eastern Christianity (INaSEC) at the Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Preface
Introduction: Policing Religion in the Soviet Union Tatiana Vagramenko and Nadezhda Beliakova
Chapter 1: Novice Sania: The Life of Underground Orthodox Communities through the Testimony of a Witness for the Prosecution Anna Samsonova and Tatiana Vagramenko
Chapter 2: Secret Agents in the Post-War Russian Orthodox Episcopate: The Case of the Ukrainian SSR Roman Skakun
Chapter 3: Fighting Prophets and Prophecies: The Soviet Secret Police against Pentecostals Vera Kliueva
Chapter 4: Agent Recruitment within the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches in Latvia Solveiga Krumina-Konkova
Chapter 5: Mykola Murani - "Berezovskii" - "Sova": The KGB Collaborator in Charge of an Underground Church Roman Skakun and Volodymyr Moroz
Chapter 6: Undercover and in Faith: The Secret Life of a Woman Agent in the Baptist Community of Soviet Kyiv Nadezhda Beliakova
Chapter 7: Targeted by the Intelligence Services yet Sheltered by the Almighty: The Memoirs of Jakob Görzen, Manager of an Underground Baptist Press in the USSR Johannes Dyck
Chapter 8: Chain of the Qur'an: Secret Agents among Muslims during the Stalinist Repressions Yuliya Shapoval
Chapter 9: The Espionage Activities of an Embassy Typist: The Fate of Secret Collaborator Emina Akchurina Renat Bekkin
Afterword: Interrogating Shadows: Theology and the Legacy of Soviet Surveillance Katya Tolstaya
About the Contributors