Lifting the Cover

This chapter explores how Father Gleb Yakunin, Father Viacheslav Polosin, and journalist Aleksandr Iosifovich Nezhnyi were selected to investigate a special section of the KGB archives, Directorate “Z's” Fourth Department, which dealt with the Orthodox Church and other religious organizations. The files contained materials on church agents of the KGB, how these agents were used to gather foreign intelligence, KGB efforts to manipulate public opinion, and how the state sought to control thought. The archives, therefore, offered a look into not only history but also the shaping of the political framework in which the church and other religious organizations functioned. Never comfortable with the probe into the KGB archives, Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chair of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, terminated the parliamentary commission's access in February 1992. Despite the curtailment of their work after only four months, however, the commission members had succeeded in uncovering many KGB transgressions into the life of the church that they had long suspected and could now prove.