Sunday, November 17, 2019

Putin’s playbook

  It’s not only images of Stalin gaining popularity. The language of Stalinist terror has made a startling return to Russian political life, with Putin labelling Kremlin critics as “national traitors” and a “fifth column”….Earlier this year another opinion poll by the independent Levada Centre – generally considered the most reliable indication of the public mood in Russia – found for the first time that a majority of Russians (52%) believe Stalin’s bloody rule was “probably” or “definitely” a positive thing. Paradoxically a majority (60%) said they would not like to live or work in a country ruled by Stalin.
  “The figure of Stalin is very contradictory,” Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Centre think tank, told Russia’s Vedomosti paper earlier this year.  “Russians believe that he won the war and battled against corruption, but they understand how frightening it would be to live under such a leader.  They’d like to live in a computer game where Marshall Zhukov takes Berlin but not in a country where they can drag you out of your apartment.”…
  Late last year Patriarch Kirill – an alleged former KGB agent – reminded Russians of the “positive” aspects of Stalin’s rule. …
“Atheists also needed a god,” says Nina Koss­man, an author and translator whose grandfather was murdered by the KGB during Stalin’s Great Terror.  “And he was right there, in the form of Lenin, on every classroom wall.”   https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5057/how-russia-fell-back-in-love-with-stalin
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  Pacepa’s book Disinformation gives remarkable data about how the Kremlin, since the time of Stalin, manipulated religions. Today, we see the Russian government using the so-called Russian Orthodox Church following the same plan. 
  As a matter of fact “Patriarch” Kirill, the present day head of the Russian Schismatic Church, went to Cuba in February 2016 to meet Pope Francis and make a Joint Declaration, the first time leaders of the Catholic Church and Moscow patriarchate met. While on communist soil the two issued a lengthy statement that censures the Ukrainian Catholics and favors the Russian aggression against that country. 
  To counter the impression of a Russia that converted, like many progressivists spread, it seems opportune to release some data offered in the book Disinformation, facts that the media studiously do not report.  Some quotations presented below reveal the blatant manipulation of the “Orthodox Church” carried out by the Russian government.  Thus it becomes difficult to avoid affirming that the meeting in Cuba should be understood as following the same ground rules.
-Metropolitan Nikodin at a WCC meeting; in 1972 he was elected its president
About the prelates of the “Orthodox Church” placed at the service of Communism, Pacepa states: 
  “The Mitrokhin Archive, a voluminous collection of Soviet foreign intelligence documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1992, provides the identities and Soviet intelligence code-names of many Russian orthodox priests dispatched over the years to the World Council of Churches for the specific purpose of influencing the politics and decisions of that organization.  In fact in 1972 Soviet intelligence managed to have Metropolitan Nikodin (its agent Adamant) elected WCC president. 
  “A 1989 KGB document boasts:  ‘Now the agenda of the WCC is also our agenda.’  More recently Metropolitan Kirill (agent Mikhaylov), who had been an influential representative to the World Council of Churches since 1971 and after 1975 a member of the WCC Central Committee, was in 2009 elected patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.” (Desinformation, Portuguese ed., Vide Editorial, 2015, p. 31; English ed., WND Books, 2013, p. 3) …
  Pacepa confirms that “patriarch” Alexis was also a KGB agent: “On December 5, 2008, Alexis II, the 15th Patriarch of Moscow of All Russia and the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, died. He had worked for the KGB under the code-name of Drozdov and was awarded the KGB Certificate of Honor, as was revealed in a KGB archive accidentally left behind in Estonia when the Russians pulled out of it. For the first time in history, Russia had the opportunity to conduct the democratic election of a new patriarch, but that was not to be.
-Kirill, today taking orders from Putin
  “On January 27, 2009 the 700 Synod delegates assembled in Moscow were presented with a slate listing three candidates:  Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk (a secret member of the KGB code-named Mikhylov), Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk (who worked for the KGB under the code-name Ostrovsky), and Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga (who had the KGB code-name Topaz). 
  “When the bells at Christ the Savior Cathedral tolled to announce that a new patriarch had been elected, Kirill/Mikhaylov proved to be the winner.  Regardless of whether he was the best leader for his church he certainly was in a better position to influence the religious world abroad than were the other candidates. 
  "In 1971 the KGB had sent Kirill to Geneva as the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to that Soviet propaganda machine that was the World Council of Churches. In 1975, the KGB infiltrated Kirill into the Central Committee of the WCC, which had become a Kremlin pawn . In 1989 the KGB appointed him chairman of the Russian patriarchate’s foreign relations as well.  He still held those positions when he was elected patriarch.”…
  In his important report Pacepa gives this estimate: “Recently released KGB documents show that one half of all the Soviet Union’s clergy were agents or undercover KGB employees until at least the end of the Gorbachev era.” (Ibid., p. 468, n. 5; English ed., p. 372, f. 5)  What should we conclude from this impressive information revealed by Ion Pacepa?  As head of the Romanian Secret Service, he was in conditions to know these facts and to disclose them as he did.  https://www.traditioninaction.org/History/F_009_Kyrill_2.html
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  The report, seen by the Guardian, consists of a stack of yellowing typewritten pages bound together as a book, which carries the legend 'Top Secret Ekz. No. 2 Series K' and the title `Summary of operational intelligence work by the 4th department of the KGB in the Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR in 1958'.
  On page 125 is a short account of the recruitment, in that year, of a young Orthodox priest given the codename 'Drozdov'.  The agent is not named, but key characteristics coincide with Alexy's life.
Like the Patriarch, Drozdov was born in Tallinn in 1929, spoke fluent Russian and Estonian, was a doctor of theology and was serving as an Orthodox priest in Estonia in 1958.
  Drozdov, who impressed the KGB with his eagerness, discretion and lively, forthcoming manner began his career as an agent by providing information on a corrupt priest at a church in the small town of Jyhvi.
  The Patriarch was the rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Jyhvi from 1950 until 1957. By 1961 he had become the bishop of Tallinn and Estonia aged only 32. The 1958 KGB report on Drozdov said his promotion to this post was 'considered' during his recruitment.
  In the same year that he became a bishop, Alexy's rapid rise within the World Council of Churches began - the very course the KGB planned for Drozdov.
Indrek Jurjo, the Estonian historian who investigated the KGB report, said: v`It must be him.  It's very close.  There were very few priests of the Orthodox Church here at that time.  The description, the age, the plan for him to become a bishop - it fits.'
  The report describes Drozdov as agreeing to work for the KGB on patriotic grounds. 'He's described here as an agent,' said Mr Jurjo. 'That means he had a KGB officer who he met with regularly in clandestine locations and who interrogated him.  He would also have written reports.'  Drozdov's reports, along with the KGB annual summaries after 1958, were taken to Moscow in 1991.  After the 1991 putsch President Boris Yeltsin gave a Russian parliamentary commission carte blanche to probe into some of the darkest secrets of the KGB, only to withdraw it a few months later under pressure from the secret police and other powerful figures….
  In Russia only one small newspaper, the weekly Novaya Gazeta, has reported the Estonian find.  A freelance television journalist, Boris Sobolyev, who travelled to Tallinn to film the story, has been unable to find a Russian news programme willing to air it.   https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1
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  Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria Valeri Simeonov said in an interview with public broadcaster that
Patriarch Kirill, who is known as a KGB agent and ‘cigarette Metropolitan of Russia’, had no right to lecture Bulgaria about the right way of things.
  “This man has not descended from heaven, he is not a messenger of Jesus Christ.  Kirill is known as the ‘cigarette Metropolitan of Russia’.  Since 1996, he has earned $14 bn on duti-free importing cigarettes [to Russia].  This cunning fellow earned $14 bn on cigarettes and $4 bn – on importing wine under the pretense of church needs [and without paying excise duties],” he said.

“He has a private aircraft, a villa in Switzerland, a $30,000 watch.  What is he?  He is not an Eastern Orthodox cleric.  He is Agent Mikhailov, a second-class agent of the Soviet KGB, which is proven.  And this person has the conscience to give us lectures about the truth in front of the president?!” the Deputy Prime Minister stated.  Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria Valeri Simeonov said in an interview with public broadcaster that Patriarch Kirill, who is known as a KGB agent and ‘cigarette Metropolitan of Russia’, had no right to lecture Bulgaria about the right way of things.   https://belsat.eu/en/news/bulgarian-deputy-pm-about-patriarch-kirill-of-moscow-kgb-agent-dares-to-teach-us/

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