The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents : Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. These case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era. These are the stories of the resilience and creative agency of religious believers in times when their faith in God was considered a legal offense. These issues are addressed through an in-depth analysis of previously untapped archival sources from the Soviet secret police archives and eyewitness testimonies.