This folder includes information on the arrest of Patriarch Tikhon, 1919 and 1922, and Felix Dzerzhinsky’s minutes of 2 December 1920 meeting asserting exclusive role of the VChK in undermining the Church. The note includes extracts of a 23 February 1922 decree on confiscation of Church treasures, and describes the subsequent liquidation of Bishop Phillipe and Professor Uspenski, the emergence and persecution of the True Orthodox Church and True Orthodox Christians operating underground, and KGB Penetration of the True Orthodox Church’s top leadership during the 1960’s. Efforts to strengthen Orthodox control over Belorussian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian national churches, the February 1975 conference of heads of Warsaw Pact security services and their decision to engage in joint action against the Vatican, the World Council of Churches and other religious institutions in the West, and the KGB’s campaign against underground religious manuscript publishers (samizdat) during 1970’s are discussed.

The file contains KGB statistics on religious participation throughout the USSR, and a description of Archbishop Sinod’s, anti-Soviet activities in 1920’s and his support for Hitler during the Great Patriotic War. The notes section includes Mitrokhin’s thoughts on religion in Kievan Russ in 988 and extracts from FCD operations files on Church personalities involved in operations abroad. Includes operational codenames of KGB agents who had infiltrated the True Orthodox Church

Background information from John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr on the notebooks and their work with Vassiliev while writing the book ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.''

Original notes kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives. Contains scans of the original notebook, a Russian transcription, and an English translation.

Original notes kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives. Contains scans of the original notebook, a Russian transcription, and an English translation.

Original notes kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives. Contains scans of the original notebook, a Russian transcription, and an English translation.

Original notes kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives. Contains scans of the original notebook, a Russian transcription, and an English translation.

Original notes kept by Alexander Vassiliev while researching in the KGB archives. Contains scans of the original notebook, a Russian transcription, and an English translation.

Mitrokhin states that discipline was the main reason for assigning a pseudonym to a KGB agent. Some agents refused to choose a pseudonym, considering it to be humiliating. But as Mitrokhin points out, a refusal to use a pseudonym could diminish the psychological and operational effect of the recruitment process. The KGB Order No. 00430 stipulated that all recruits had to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding their collaboration with the agency. The KGB Order No. 00235 specified that the most valuable agents had to be indexed solely by their respective pseudonyms. As a recruitment tactic, Mitrokhin notes, the use of a pseudonym enhanced agent’s awareness of the secretive nature of one’s work and accentuated the conspiratorial function of the KGB.