Volumes of conference papers rarely make challenging reading, but this is an exception, a book devoted to religion in the Cold War from a predominantly East-European perspective. So Július Filo's initiative in hosting a conference on the subject in Bratislava (Slovakia) in September 2011 and then promptly putting this together is welcome. The financial sponsor is the International Visegradfund.
This is only the ‘first fruits’ of what is intended to be an ongoing and co-ordinated study which will include the gathering of personal testimonies, as well as further conferences. This is at least the third attempt to study the vast subject of religion in the Cold War in a co-ordinated way. Previous ones have foundered. The World Council of Churches never completed a self-examination of its role and a later attempt initiated in Finland was discontinued.
Christian world community and the Cold War contains seventeen chapters, some of which add substantially to what is known about the period, but the overall quality is uneven.
The first essay, by Filo himself, confronts us with a new perspective and thus sets the tone for the volume. Even to readers who think that they know their Cold War history, his account of the Lutheran Church in Slovakia contains much that will be new. It is chilling to read how it had to eulogise Stalin.
In the next chapter, on Bulgaria, by Mochil Metodiev, we read the book's most stunning revelation. The introduction reads: ‘The ecumenical activity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was initiated, pursued and controlled respectively by the Communist State and its State Security Service.’ One always suspected this to be true throughout the region, but it has never been asserted categorically before. Perhaps it may be overstated: there were certainly church activists in various countries whose motivation was genuine and they regarded ecumenical contact as a practical way of protecting their Churches, especially if worse times were to come. However, Metodiev goes on to quote chapter and verse, based on research in the now-open State archives. The agencies set goals: specific resolutions favouring the Communist viewpoint on world affairs to be passed at assemblies of the World Council of Churches and individuals sympathetic to ‘the cause’ to be elected. And so it was that Metropolitan Pankrati, ‘a State Security agent recruited by the Sixth Department on June 24, 1971’ was elected four years later to the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. The well-known ecumenist Todor Sabev is listed in the files as ‘the most important and effective Bulgarian agent in the ecumenical movement’. There is more, but one should note that these agencies were more than capable of exaggerating their influence in order to bolster their own importance and claims of success with the Communist authorities.
Equally revealing are the two chapters on Hungary unmasking, among much else, the collaborative activities of the Hungarian Lutheran bishop Zoltan Káldy, appointed by the state, who was predatory in his denunciation of any cleric who did not toe the official line to the letter. He also tried to undermine the reputation of Keston College (as it then was) with the World Council of Churches. Unfortunately the first of these chapters, by András Korányi, like some others in the book, loses focus because of a poor translation.
The second is by Pastor Risto Lehtonen (Finland). The Lutheran World Federation, anxious to show solidarity with its people in Hungary, negotiated that the 1984 general assembly should be in Budapest. Pastor Lehtonen undertook to make the arrangements, but he discovered that the price was to be the ‘election’ of Bishop Káldy as president. A ‘Mr Solti’ approached him in person to demand this, but the name later proved to be false; this man represented the Hungarian security services. This was open skulduggery and it was a devastating personal blow to Pastor Lehtonen, quite apart from the damage done to the reputation of Bishop Lajos Ordass, whom the Communists had removed as leader of the Hungarian Lutherans.
Perhaps the best chapter in the book is the magisterial essay (‘Some personal reflections’) by John Arnold, former Dean of Durham Cathedral – and it is he who issues the warning against naïve belief in the veracity of all that is to be found in the Communist archives. He might have mentioned Keston College, though, when he says, ‘Our people were confused, having no information or analysis other than horror stories from underground sources on the one hand and the bland assurances of the official spokesmen of the over-ground churches on the other.’ It was, after all, precisely to plug this gap and document the truth that Keston College began its activities in 1969 – and John Arnold was a founder-member of its council. He does, however, mention Keston on the next page.
One cannot end without a reference to Professor Bruce Rigdon, an American academic and congregational minister, who is now the co-ordinator of this continuing project. He laid his reputation on the line in 1983 by presenting a two-hour film, sponsored jointly by the NBC News and the National Council of Churches (New York), which was widely criticised for its bland content, and in which he failed to mention persecution of the Church. He followed this by leading a ‘peace invasion’ the next year, in which 266 American Christians visited the USSR; their pre-tour briefing underplayed the facts of continuing oppression by the Soviet authorities. A promise that there would be informal meetings with groups of believers was not honoured, and Rigdon failed to protest with sufficient vigour. His chapter, unaccountably, does not mention this visit. He led a further group in 1988. This time, he tells us, the visitors ‘where possible, advocated in [sic] behalf of Christians who were in prison’ – but this was too late. By now all the prisoners except the Lithuanian Catholics had been released and Mikhail Gorbachev was well into his new policy of encouraging religious liberty. He does not mention the fundamental changes which had already taken place. The book as a whole pays insufficient attention to the USSR (one other short chapter only, not well translated).
That said one hopes that the project will continue, for there is much still to be documented. Patriarch Kirill and the Moscow patriarchate have yet to reveal the story of the Church's collaboration with the State in the 1960s and '70s.
