"You have turned the temple into a house of trade"

An Open Appeal

Ekspress khronika, 17 May 1996, (excerpts)

Your Supreme Holiness! One of the results of the indefatigable attempts of the Moscow patriarchate to acquire church property located in independent Estonia has turned out to be not only a schism with world Orthodoxy but also the publication in the mass media of several archival materials about the activity of one of the functionaries of the Russian Orthodox church whowas at the same time an agent of the KGB with the code name "Drozdov," who, as it now appears, began his career as an informer in the Estonian SSR.

In 1991-1992, at the time of working with the archives of the union KGB, the parliamentary commission on investigation of the causes and circumstances published data about the activity of agent "Drozdov," who was one of the leaders of the patriarchate. For example, in the materials for 1969 there is a note: "Agents 'Drozdov' and 'Peresvet' went to England as part of the delegation of the ROC at a session of the executive committee of the Conference of European Churches (CEC). Informations received from agents about people of interest to the KGB and the activity of this organization." 1986: "Agents 'Drozdov' and 'Remark' returned from Spain, who had been there as part of a delegation of the ROC for the session of the CEC-SEKE. Information received that merits operational attention regarding development of circumstances in CEC on the eve of the Assembly."...

Comparison of the biographical data of A.M. Ridiger with the service biography of agent "Drozdov" provides adequate reason to conclude that these are one and the same person. Inasmuch as this information has become widely known recently, primarily in Estonia, the Orthodox believers whom you insistently summon to subordination to your jurisdiction should naturally expect from Your Supreme Holiness an immediate response: either the disprove the information that discredits the chief hierarch of the ROC, if it is untrue, or else a sincere and honest confession and explanation such as Archbishop Khrisostom of Lithuania gave when he confirmed that he had been recruited by the KGB as agent "Restorer."

Alas, neither repentance nor justification has been heard from the lips of Your Supreme Holiness. Meantime, on 1 April the law of the Estonian republic on responsibility of former agents and officers of the special services came into effect. Information about regular and irregular aides of the Gestapo and KGB who have not voluntarily revealed their criminal past will soon be published. . . .

The tragedy of the church is that after the fall of the antireligious totalitarian system, in six years of complete freedom from state control under your leadership the church still has not been able to move onto the path of spiritual regeneration and restoration of genuine conciliarity. . . .Your personal guilt is that in the years of your administration the suppression of the basis of the spiritual richness of Orthodoxy, the spirit of conciliarity, continues. . . .

In 1958 the KGB documented the use of agent "Drozdov" for "dispatch into capitalist states as a part of church delegations." It is clear from the abovementioned materials of the KGB of USSR that these plans were accomplished. The Estonian government, which possesses rich materials about the effectiveness of the work of such delegations, prefers to deal with a genuinely independent Orthodox church, and not with nests of agent "Drozdov."

If Your Supreme Holiness is incapable of honest confession and Christian repentance, they there remains for you only one acceptable course: summon up the courage to retire.

25 April 1996

posted 29 August 1996