Struggle of Soviet Security Services against Religious Underground in the First Post-War Years (1945-1946)

Abstract

The purpose of the research paper is to comprehensively analyze the activities of Soviet security services in their struggle against the religious underground in 1945-1946, to clarify the forms, methods, and scales of repressive measures, as well as to determine the place of the religious underground in the system of the post-war policy of Sovietization and control over society. The scientific novelty is in the comprehensive coverage of the agent-operational cases conducted by the Soviet security services against the religious underground in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR in the first post-war years (1945-1946). Conclusions. The formation of the post-war policy of the Soviet security services regarding the religious underground in Ukraine was not a situational reaction to individual manifestations of disloyalty, but constituted a holistic, pre-designed model of state control over the spiritual sphere. The primary outcome of such a policy was the institutionalization of the notion of the ‘religious underground’ as a form of anti-Soviet activity. From the standpoint of the Chekists, any religiosity that did not align with the state-sanctioned framework was automatically politicized and criminalized. Materials from the agent-operational case files on the religious underground demonstrate that repressive practices were combined with an extensive network of agent-based operational activity. The security services sought not only to destroy or isolate the assets of religious groups physically, but also to deeply penetrate their environment, destroy internal solidarity, discredit leaders, and place communities under constant control. The mass recruitment of agents, the starting of centralized operational cases (among which are ‘Skit’, ‘Ostrov’, ‘Chaldei’, ‘Zavet’), and the standardization of charges indicate the systemic and long-term nature of that policy. A special place in the post-war operational plans was allocated to the Protestant underground, which was considered an ideologically hostile, transnational, and structurally autonomous phenomenon. It was those features – horizontal ties, missionary activity, internal discipline – that made Protestant communities the object of long-term and systematic investigation. Consequently, the accumulation of agent-operational materials between 1945 and 1946 became the basis for the large-scale repressive operations of the late 1940s. In general, the post-war policy of the Soviet security services regarding the religious underground laid the foundation for a long-term model of state control over the spiritual sphere, in which religious autonomy was treated as a threat to security, and believers were regarded as potential carriers of hostile ideology. The outcome was the retreat of a significant part of religious life into the shadows, the radicalization of specific communities, and a profound deformation of the relationship between the state and religious communities, which had determined the nature of the confessional policy of the USSR for the subsequent decades.