Did you read the review of the book by a Russian Orthodox Church parisioner ?
He affirmed that what the author had predicted had taken place in his Church.
Did you read the review of the book by a Russian Orthodox Church parisioner ?
He affirmed that what the author had predicted had taken place in his Church.
I saw this one, but I didn't notice that he said he was a parishioner...
The Devil in the Details, January 12, 2010
By Dr. Ambrosius Aurelius
I just finished reading the new book by former KGB Col. Konstantin Preobrazhensky-- KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent (Gerard Group Publishing, 2008.) It is truly frightening to read this material, somewhat similar to the feeling one has in reading the published Mitrokhin archival material in The Sword and the Shield. I grew up in America in the 1960's learning how to "duck and cover" under my desk in the event of a Soviet missle launch, but later began to view American paranoia about Russia and the KGB as somewhat comical, especially after perestroika and the fall of the former Soviet Union. I had read some of Col. Preobrazhensky's articles on the internet during the past two years, but his book on the KGB and Russian Emigration had never, to my knowledge, been translated into English.
This book is a collection of Preobrazhensky's observations and anecdotes about KGB/FSB involvement in the religious affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate and the exiled White Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) during the past few decades. He also discusses his own history as an agent and journalist working within the KGB in Japan and Russia prior to his seeking asylum in the U.S. in 2003. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking of the famous dictum from President Vladimir Putin to the effect that "there is no such thing as a FORMER KGB agent..." Somehow, Preobrazhensky, unlike his old friend Alexander Litvinenko, has lived to tell the tale of life within the KGB before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of the permutations of the Russian foreign intelligence service during the Presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
What is most disturbing about these revelations are the fairly detailed descriptions of KGB propaganda techniques and recruitment methods, based upon the experiences of Preobrazhensky (and Vladimir Putin, himself) during his training years in the KGB. It all seems a bit surreal to an average American Joe like myself, but certainly offers a plausible explanation for what has happened to the ROCOR in America during the past two decades. For example, as I was reading Preobrazhensky's description of the old KGB/FSB "blueprint" for the takeover of ROCOR parishes in America, I discerned the exact series of events that had transpired in my own American ROCOR parish after 2000-- first, the appointment of a nationalistic, "Soviet" rector, then the gradual (or even sudden) replacement of the old American parish council and warden with mysterious recent Soviet emigres. I didn't realize at the time that the Moscow Patriarchate would simply annex the ROCOR by May of 2007.
I have never been big on conspiracy theories, in general, and I am all too familiar with our American propensity for collective paranoia, but this book, overall, seems quite credible and well documented. The devil is, of course, in the details, as in the case of the Mitrokhin archives, and, if Col. Preobrazhensky is correct, the devil is also now, apparently, in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.