In Friday morning, one of the most well-known figures of Russia, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Churh, Alexius (Alexiy) II died. He was the head of the church for more than 18 years and probably one of the most loved people in whole Russia, considering the importance of the church and the patriarch himself in the country.

It’s said that it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead and the media seems mostly abide to the saying. Especially Estonian media, which mostly writes about how Alexius was a dear friend of Estonia (he was born in Tallinn, on 23rd of February 1929), spoke Estonian freely and how he was the bridge between Estonia and Russia, especially in times Russia wanted to have no connections with Estonia.

That all is kind of true. He was an important man in Russian hierarchy, considering Russian-Estonian relations, but in this euphoria of speaking only of the good people seem to forget that Alexius II was in addition an agent of the KGB – the security agency that oppressed and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

My dear friend Toomas Kümmel wrote a very interesting article in September 2003 about Aleksey Ridiger’s KGB-connections. Since the article is in Estonian, I’ll translate some of it.

In 1992 Russian Supreme Council (parliament) published a report on the activity of Russian Orthodox Church and its Moscow Patriarchate during the Soviet Regime. Conclusions were ruthless – the Patriarchate was flooded with KGB agents and it had become a trustworthy tool for the communist regime.

Media published number of names of high Church officials who were KGB agents. Despite of the fact that agent name “Drozdov” was mentioned in a lot of documents; the official behind that name was never disclosed.

Historian Indrek Jürjo, who has researched all KGB documents in archives, found a report by KGB 4th department, about agent Drozdov, who was born in 1929 and whom KGB recruited in 1958. KGB wanted to use Drozdov to discover anti-Soviet elements among Orthodox clerics.

“He is one of those who interest KGB operatively. During recruitment a probable promotion to the position of Bishop of Tallinn and Estonia was considered,” the KGB report says about Drozdov.

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By documents published in world media there is no doubt that behind the agent name of Drozdov there was the head of the Orthodox Church Alexius II.

Priest Gleb Jakunin found a document which proved that Alexius II gained as the only church official KGB diploma in 1988, for “special favours in operative investigative work”.

Drozdov means “blackbird” in Russian, but his agent name has also been associated with his final thesis in Leningrad clerical academy in 1953 – the thesis was about a well-known cleric in 19th century, Filaret Drozdov.

There actually are quite a lot of materials in English all over the internet describing Alexius’s KGB-connections. During Soviet regime it was impossible to rise to the top of Church hierarchy without KGB approval and also many archive documents prove that this highly honored patriarch was actually a common “security” agent.

A KGB agent died in Russia yesterday morning.

Colleagues in KGB: Vladimir Putin & Aleksey Ridiger.

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