The pulpit of the temple was a secret, and a tunnel connected it with the building of the old Soviet embassy
The scandal surrounding the expulsion of three priests from the church “St. Nicholas” in Sofia gained momentum in recent days, but the use of this temple for espionage and subversive activities is not at all a new thing in Bulgarian history. It is proved by the studies of our researchers in the Soviet archives in recent years.
Documents from the personal fund of Gen. Georgiy Karpov, as well as the collection “Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence” shed light on Dmitry Fedichkin heading Soviet intelligence in our country in the period 1943-44.
on this anti-state activity carried out in the worship building in the past. According to them, Metropolitan Stephan himself, the head of the BOC at the time, became a target of Soviet intelligence and more specifically of the foreign department of the NKVD in 1943. The reason is that Stalin thought of deploying a very rational strategy to bring the church under the aegis of power and the secret services. The task was assigned to the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the majority of whose members are NKVD officers. The aim was to attract the clergy in order to mobilize wider sections of Soviet society through them, as well as to recruit priests in high positions and with influence in Eastern Europe.
For the first time at a conference in 2011 at the New Bulgarian University, the famous religious researcher and director of the BAS archive Lizbet Lyubenova said that Exarch Stefan worked for Soviet intelligence.
Separately, according to the political scientist Anton Todorov, this is also described in the Russian multivolume “Essays on Russian Foreign Intelligence” under the editorship of Yevgeny Primakov. The case of the recruitment of Metropolitan Stefan is described in detail in the fourth volume on pages 507 – 509. From them, the researcher comes to the conclusion that “at the end of 1943, Metropolitan Stefan began to actively cooperate with the resident of the Soviet intelligence in Bulgaria D. Fedichkin” . In 2014, Anton Todorov told “168 Chasa” about the relationship of the head of the BOC, Exarch Stefan, with the Soviet services, which took place in this very place. Metropolitan Stefan PHOTOS: “24 Hours” ARCHIVE
“It is very interesting that the connection with the Metropolitan was maintained in the Russian Church, the then Nikolaev Church, and now the Church of St. Nicholas of Mirliki the Miracle Worker” in Sofia.” Metropolitan Stefan used this church as a “mailbox” for the Soviet secret services, i.e. there he “transmitted the information” he had collected for the benefit of the USSR. Anton Todorov relies on declassified Soviet archives, which reveal that the Metropolitan of Sofia “used the pulpit of the church as a hiding place. Everything he brought he put in it and from there it was received by the Soviet residence, except that he carried the radio station in his car. And even when once the Soviet resident Fedichkin asked him: “Isn’t this sacrilege?”, since the proposal to use the pulpit as a secret was Metropolitan Stefan himself”, the latter answered: “If God knows that in this way we serve the holy deed, then he will forgive us and bless us”.
In addition, Soviet archives reveal that Fedichkin often used his personal Packard car, which was passed without checks by all police stations in Sofia and the surrounding area. Tsar Boris III shakes hands with the military attache and resident at the USSR embassy, Colonel Ivan Dergachev, next to him is the assistant military attache Major Leonid Sereda.
Moreover, the information that was obtained under cover of the most holy place in the church building seems to have been of the utmost importance. A document published in 1998 in the study “1941”, as well as in the book “GRU Empire. Essays on the History of Russian Intelligence”, published in the following year, 1999. It also mentions the name of Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia, quoted in a message by a Soviet spy with the name “Zeus”. On April 27, 1941, he reported from Sofia to the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army: “Metropolitan Stefan informed “Hugo” (probably a Bulgarian who worked for the Soviet secret services was hiding under this pseudonym) that on April 25, during lunch in Kyustendil he had a conversation with a German general who told him:
1. The Germans are preparing a strike
against the USSR, as first will
use the situation in
the army and inside the country
2. Officers from Liszt’s army (we are talking about Field Marshal Sigmund Wilhelm Liszt), who know Russian, are recalled to Berlin for special training, after which they will be assigned to the border of the USSR. White Guards who know Ukraine will be assigned to help them.
3. German intelligence in the USSR provides complete information on all matters.
4. Germany will not allow the conclusion of an agreement between the USSR and Turkey.”
From the same document it is clear that “Zeus” is Colonel Leonid Sereda, acting as assistant to the military attaché in Sofia, and in practice one of the heads of the Soviet military residency in our country.
As is known, initially the Russian church in the capital was conceived simply as a chapel to the then building of the Russian embassy. The building in which the legation was housed is located in close proximity to both the palace (adjacent to it) and the church. In this regard, according to those in the know, it is very likely that the temple, in its capacity as a lodging house, also keeps other secrets. For example, even nowadays, in the garden behind the church and in front of the entrance of the former embassy, which currently houses a luxury restaurant as the “House of Moscow in Sofia”, there is a small, bunker-like building. It is 4 stories deep, and on the second level it is connected to the main building by a secret passage. On the lowest, fourth floor underground, there is a bomb shelter. There is also a tunnel dug from it – in the opposite direction. And at the moment it is locked with a metal door, and over the years there have been various legends about it – that it leads to the palace (unlikely, knowing what our relations with Soviet Russia were before September 9, 1944), or to the opposite side of “Tsar Osvoboditel” blvd. – next to “Bulgaria” hotel. However, the hypothesis expressed by BAS employees who worked in the 1980s in the legation building, which was turned into a scientific institute, seems to be the most logical. And it is that the secret tunnel was a connection between the church and the former embassy, and most likely its other end goes straight into the temple.
2023-09-30 10:00:00
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