Soviet regime returning to Eastern Europe

They say we are not headed toward another Cold War and that the KGB is dead. Think again.





September 18, 2008


By Geraldine Fagan
Forum 18 News Service (Excerpts)


Fr Ioann Grudnitsky – who has already been fined for conducting services without state registration – faced further intimidation when he conducted the funeral of a parishioner in the village of Ruzhany, he told Forum 18 News Service. Village Council leader Leonid Moskalevich showed him an order from the KGB secret police banning him from leading the funeral as his parish – he is under the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad Provisional Supreme Church Authority – is not registered. However, he went ahead while Moskalevich and a police officer observed. "After working our whole lives in factories and on collective farms, sacrificing our health and receiving a tiny pension, we've reached a point where we have to ask permission from the local KGB secret police to organise a funeral!" the parishioners complained in an open letter to the President. "The local KGB has no right whatsoever to interfere in the life of the church." Moskalevich denied to Forum 18 that the document had come from the KGB or that it was a ban. Meanwhile, Grodno-based Baptist pastor Yuri Kravchuk is the latest pastor to be fined for leading unregistered worship.


The KGB secret police in Pruzhany District, close to the border with Poland, has tried to stop an Orthodox priest from leading a funeral in the local village of Ruzhany, the priest, Fr Ioann Grudnitsky, told Forum 18 News Service on 16 September. "They're starting to meddle in believers' affairs again." Yet Leonid Moskalevich, who heads Ruzhany Village Council (Brest Region), denied to Forum 18 that this was the case on 17 September: "It wasn't like that at all."

In Belarus, religious activity not sanctioned by the state is subject to prosecution under Soviet-era provisions of the Administrative Violations Code. Yuri Kravchuk, a Baptist pastor in the north-western regional centre of Grodno, is the latest to be fined.

After displaying a document from Pruzhany District KGB prohibiting Fr Ioann from conducting the funeral of Ruzhany parishioner Nina Levizarovich on 23 July, Moskalevich and a local police officer remained for the service's duration at the village cemetery, Fr Ioann told Forum 18. While the state representatives did not stop the funeral from going ahead, said the priest, they refused to give him a copy of the KGB instruction.


Ruzhany parishioners are "indignant" that Moskalevich, the village council chairman, threatened Fr Ioann with the KGB secret police instruction forbidding him to conduct the funeral. Before her death, Levizarovich had specifically requested that Fr Ioann lead her funeral, they point out in an open letter to President Aleksandr Lukashenko published on the Russian religious affairs website Portal-Credo on 10 September.

"After working our whole lives in factories and on collective farms, sacrificing our health and receiving a tiny pension, we've reached a point where we have to ask permission from the local KGB secret police to organise a funeral!" the parishioners exclaim in disbelief. "The local KGB has no right whatsoever to interfere in the life of the church – first and foremost they should shed tears of repentance on behalf of their Chekist predecessors who swam in human blood."

The Belarusian KGB – which has not changed its name since Soviet times - has made no attempt to distance itself from its Soviet past. It proudly traces its history back to the first Soviet secret police, the Cheka, which was founded by Felix Dzerzhinsky.