Pentecostal religious unions of Ukraine as an object of the intelligence work of the NKGB-MGB bodies during the late Stalinism (1944-1953)

Abstract

The aim of the study is to analyze the content of the intelligence work of the Soviet special services, which they carried out among the Pentecostals of Ukraine during the period of late Stalinism (1944-1953). Research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific (analysis and synthesis, the method of inductive and deductive logic) and special historical (historicallogical and system-structural) methods. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the author’s attempt, on the basis of little-known or those that are first introduced into scientific circulation, documents on the work of anti-religious divisions of the NKGB-MGB to highlight the content of their work among the Pentecostals of Ukraine during the late Stalinism (1944-1953). Conclusions. In the period of late Stalinism, Pentecostal religious unions in Ukraine, as in the pre-war years, remained the object of the intelligence work of the Soviet special services. The reason for this was the peculiarities of the Pentecostal doctrine ("mysticism", "spiritual" baptism and glossolalia) and pacifism, which did not fit into the atheist-rationalistic pseudoscientific Marxist-Leninist model of the "ideal" communist society. Given the change in the paradigm of state-church relations in the USSR caused by the Second World War, the NKGB-MGB bodies were also forced to change their methods of work in the religious sphere, including in relation to Pentecostals. Unable to liquidate the Pentecostal religious unions revived during the German occupation in an administrative-operational way, under the conditions of the legalization of religion in the USSR, the NKGB-MGB authorities went for a trick and decided to liquidate them by joining them to the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists (hereinafter ACECB), controlled by the Soviet special services. For the implementation of this plan, the Soviet state security organs for eight years used various agent-intelligence combinations in conjunction with outright repressive measures (in fact, large-scale operations) aimed at adjusting the religious palette of Ukraine and joining the Pentecostals to the ACECB. However, they all proved to be insufficient, as they led to the complete union of the Pentecostals with the Baptists. This circumstance allowed the leaders of unregistered Pentecostals, after the death of J. Stalin and their release from the camps, to continue to petition the Soviet authorities to register their union separately from the ACECB.