Episode 308: Felix Corley on his book Catholicos and Commissar (October 29, 2025)

In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck, Andrew Sorokowski, and Christopher Zehnder interview Felix Corley on his book Catholicos and Commissar: The Armenian Church under the Soviet Regime (October29, 2025)

Part of a two-volume set, this volume explores the history of the Armenian Apostolic Church under Soviet rule. Initially flourishing across the Russian Empire, the Church briefly enjoyed greater religious freedom after the February 1917 revolution. However, the Bolshevik regime imposed severe restrictions after October 1917: churches were seized, clergy were taxed and jailed, religious education was banned, and international ties were severed. By 1938, Stalin's purges had devastated the Church, culminating in the murder of Catholicos Khoren and the closure of almost all churches.

Despite this, a partial revival occurred after World War II. In 1945, Stalin permitted the election of a new Church leader, Catholicos Gevorg, who supported Soviet territorial claims and repatriation efforts. Although minimal, the Church's presence in the South Caucasus and southern Russia was gradually restored.

The book is based on extensive archival research, memoirs, and interviews, offering a vivid account of how the Church and its followers struggled to maintain faith under an oppressive regime.

Volume 2 continues the history of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the Soviet Union, focusing on the leadership of Catholicos Vazgen I, who served from 1955 until 1994-the longest tenure of any religious leader in the USSR. Chosen by the KGB after a lack of suitable Soviet-based candidates, Vazgen publicly supported the Soviet regime but worked quietly to strengthen the Church's presence at home and abroad. The Church's seminary at Echmiadzin grew, and diaspora ties were cautiously encouraged, though most parishes remained isolated.

Despite the appearance of normalcy, the Church operated under heavy restrictions. Major decisions were often made by the state, and KGB agents were placed among the clergy. The harsh anti-religious campaigns of the Khrushchev era forced the closure of many churches. After Khrushchev's fall, restrictions eased somewhat, but the Church remained passive, neither resisting nor expanding.

Major change came under Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s. Long-suppressed Armenian national aspirations, especially around Nagorno-Karabakh, erupted, followed by the 1988 earthquake. The Church responded with new community efforts. Though initially cautious about independence, Catholicos Vazgen eventually played a key role in legitimising the new Armenian state and reaffirming the Church's place as its official religion.

Like Volume One, this book draws from extensive archival research, memoirs, and interviews to tell the story of how the Armenian Church and its followers navigated Soviet repression and shifting political landscapes.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to w c AT radio your home for
authentic Catholic programming.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to the Open Door with your host Thomas Stork
and co host ANDREWS. Rokowski and Christopher Zander. Our guest
today is Philis Quorley, an English author and research her
We'll be talking about his book on the Church and Armenia.
The Armenian Apostolic Church was Holston Commissar. Let us begin

(00:32):
with our prayer and in the Father's own Holy Spirit.
Event Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,
and kimble of them the fire of your love. Send
forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you
shall renew the face of the earth. Let us pray,
or God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit
and instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by

(00:53):
the same Holy Spirit may be truly wise that ever
enjoys consolations through Christ the Lord. And then my father
and son.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Em Well Phillis Crowley studied modern languages at the Interverge
of Bristol and has been working in the South CAUCUSUS.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
The area in that includes Romania, off and on since
nineteen eighty one, and is the author of three books
in the eye of the Armenian storm, religion in the Soviet
Union and archival reader and Catholics and Commas are the
Armenian Church under the Soviet regime. So and he is
the editor of FUM eighteen news service. So welcome today

(01:38):
and thank you very much for being with us.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Thank you for inviting me today.

Speaker 5 (01:45):
Now, Romania Armenia, rather Romania Armenia is not a country
that probably many of our readers convert to very often.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So by giving us a background about Armenia.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yes, I mean Armenia is a country that people perhaps
have heard of but don't particularly know much about. Mount
Ara Rat, which is in fact just across the border
now in modern day Turkey, is perhaps its most famous landmark.
It squashed between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the South Caucasus.

(02:29):
It was once part of the Soviet Union. It was
before that it was in the Sarist Empire. But there
are also many Armenians who lived across the border in
the then Ottoman Empire and in northern Persia, in Iran
and following the genocide against the Armenian people in the
Ottoman Empire, where more than a million million and a

(02:50):
half people were massacred. The survivors fled either into the
Sarist Empire or down south into Area, into Lebanon, into Cyprus.
So there's a big Armenian diaspora now, including in the
United States and Western Europe. So it's a very international people,

(03:13):
so to speak. But it's the Independent Republic of Armenia,
one of the former Soviet republics. It's in the South Caucasas,
so you go down from Russia or up from Iran
or Turkey and you'll you'll find it there.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Now, the main Christian Church in Armenia is your media apostoltor,
which is of course not affoyate with your wrong constant.
How did it evolve as a separate religious organization.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Well, it basically became rather cut off from the rest
of the Christian world and went its own way after
the Council of cheld Season, so it really developed on
its own. In three oh one, it was the first
state to establish Christianity as the state religion. And this
is something that almost every Armenian will tell you almost

(04:10):
straight away, so it's very notable for that. And the
church has developed really as almost the alternative state for
many years when Armenians did not have their own state.
The church fulfilled many of the functions of the repository
of not only the faith of the people, but the culture,

(04:31):
the language, the identity, and Armenians have a very strong
sense of identity, and they know their own history, if
in rather plotted form, maybe with many of the Christian
figures from their own history, which gives them a very

(04:51):
strong self identity wherever they are in the world.

Speaker 6 (04:57):
Is the I Meanian tric really calt.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
Well, there's been there's been a lot of debate about that.
Many of the people in the past from other churches
have accused them of this, and there's various theological explanations
about what they believe. And you know, I think nowadays
they would tend to reject that. But in the past

(05:22):
it's been a bone of contention, say with the Orthodox,
especially the Russian Orthodox, who accused them of this, and
with the some parts of the Catholic Church. But I
think that one has more or less been put to rest.
Now there have been various agreements with the Vatican or
with the popes. When the Catholic OSTs have been to

(05:43):
see the Pope, they've signed declarations, and I think that
one has more or less been put to bed.

Speaker 6 (05:49):
So you said that they were maybe Jeff calcinely cut off.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
From well, I think cut off really, No, No, I
don't think that. I think they accepted only the first
church councils. This is not an area of the I'm
a specialist on. But they accepted the first few. But
then after that they became separated and just didn't have
the contact to go to attend them, and therefore they

(06:17):
sort of carried on on their own. But they're one
of a group of Oriental Orthodox churches as they're called,
including the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Eritreans and other churches
as a sort of small group of them, and even
during the Soviet period they were getting together and highly.
Selassie the Ethiopian Emperor had a big conference in Addis

(06:40):
Ababa in the seventies where all these different churches came
together for theological discussions, and really it was a kind
of family get together. So I mean there is quite
a strong self identity among the Oriental churches and the
Armenian churches in that sort of family of Christian churches.

Speaker 6 (07:04):
This is a Nero car Uniot group of actually as long.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yes, it's an Armenian Catholic Church, which is much smaller,
but it's one of the Eastern right Catholic churches, and
they they're quite strong in the Middle East. They're quite
strong in southern Georgia and northern Armenia. That's really their heartland.
But during the Soviet period all their clergy were arrested

(07:33):
and some of them were executed, and they were left
more or less without priests. And in the later Soviet period,
the patriarch Pierre Batanyan came from Beirut to a meeting
that was in fact he was invited by the Armenian
Catholic cars Vazghen and he attended in nineteen sixty five

(07:57):
and he was able to meet with some of the
people there, and he kept pushing the Soviets. He kept
pushing vasgen of the Apostolic Church to press the Soviets
to allow them to send clergy from the diaspora to
serve the communities there. But you know, the Soviets never
agreed to that. The Armenian Apostolic Church tends to regard

(08:23):
the Catholics with some ambiguity, a bit of some of
suspicion that they're trying to promote a kind of unit
type of church, pressure them to reunify with the Vatican,
all the rest of it. But there's also a lingering
respect for the academic scholarship and cultural work, particularly of

(08:43):
the Mechatorist order, who are known for their scholarship. They
run schools and publishing houses. They've got a monastery in Vienna.
There's another one in the on the island of San
Lazaro in Venice in the Venice Lagoon, which is where
by Ron learned Armenian in his time. So I mean

(09:04):
that the Armenian Apostolic Church, they sort of tend to
regard it as a little brother, maybe, but at times
one that they're rather wary of.

Speaker 7 (09:15):
I'm not mistaken. They also had a presence in Poland
because of the many Armenian merchants in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And I know that the Armenian Church in Viev which
is now western Ukraine, is one of the oldest and
most beautiful churches. I think it dates to the fourteenth century.

(09:35):
But those I understand were pretty much Polandized and became
effectively poles of the Armenian right. Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yes, that's very much the case. And when the Soviets
invaded what is now western Ukraine eastern Poland as it
was then, they arrested all the clergy, and one of them,
Dionisi Kayatanovitch, died in labor camp in nineteen fifty four.

(10:06):
The other priests were most of the survivors went to
Poland when there were population exchanges. They sort of lined
up as Polish citizens were they were Polish citizens before
the Second World War and they chose to or were
forced to emigrate to Poland. And they continued to serve

(10:27):
the Armenian Right population. But as you say, they were Polonized.
Polish was their language. The liturgy was in Armenian, but
probably many of the families barely understood it, so it
was kind of pigeon Armenian really, So you know, they're
very much integrated into They tried to retain their rights

(10:49):
and they were very small community anyway. But yes, the
cathedral now, I think there were attempts by the Vatican
nuncio who came down from Moscow to sort of organizer
an Armenian Right community in Leviev after independence, but that
fizzled out. Really in the cathedral is now in the
hands of the Armenian Apostolic Church, as many most of

(11:12):
the Armenians in Lviv now are migrants from post independence
migrants from Armenia. With the war with Azerbaijad and many
refugees from Carabach moved all over the place and including
to Leviv. And so that's the origin of most of
the current community there.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Is within the Armenian Apostolic Church. Is the desire to
be independent? Is that a theological, theologically grounded or is
it or nationalistic or cultural?

Speaker 4 (11:51):
Well, that's difficult to say. I mean, the fact they
have been independent since three oh one and before then,
why change, you know, it would never occur to it,
and they do resist attempts to try to force them.
You know, there's you know, if there were any moves
to pressure them to join the Catholic Church, for example,

(12:16):
and in the Sarist era, from time to time they
would talk about, you know, forcing them into the Orthodox
Church because in the Saris period all the faiths were
under strong government control and the Orthodox Church was obviously
given a place of primacy. Even though the Tsars abolished

(12:38):
the patriarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate was abolished during Sari's rule.
There was still a presumption that Orthodo Docs and Russian
Authots in particular were better than anyone else, and you
know that there should be assimilation into the Russian Authots church,
and so there was some pressure, but the Armenians strongly resisted.

(13:01):
Occasionally in the Soviet period people muttered about this, but
it didn't really get anywhere. And I think because of
the large Armenian diaspro would have looked very unfavorably on this.
I think the Soviets were well aware that that would
be a pretty negative thing to do to try to
force them into the Russian Orthodox Church. And the Soviets

(13:24):
did want to bring religious communities under control. They forced
all the Protestants to merge into one organization because they
believed it was easier to control them. You control them,
you have a pyramid, and you control the top of
the pyramid, and it's easier to control down below. So
the fewer separate faiths they had, the easier it would

(13:46):
be to control them. But I don't think there was
any serious attempt to merge the Armenian Church into the
Russian Orthodox Church, and they did that with the Georgian
Orthodox Church. They were, you know, under the Tsars, and
you know, the Georgians established their patriarchate at the beginning

(14:08):
of the well during the independence period, just before the
Soviet period, and they even had support from the Arminian
Apostolic Church in that, But it was only during the
Second World War that the Soviet regime really forced the
Moscow Patriarchate to recognize the independence of the Georgian Church
and recognize the patriarchate. So lots of sort of internal dynamics,

(14:33):
but really both the Tsarist regime and the Soviets wanted
to control religious communities and that included trying to dragoon
them into manageable formations, but in this case, the Armenians
held that off.

Speaker 6 (14:51):
When it's the differences, I mean, a lot of people
viewing this would have ceriency of the visiting rates because
they're pretty numerous in the United States. The turgically how
different is in Armenian rate.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
What we refused to I'm not really a specialist on that.
I don't speak Armenian. I have obviously been in Armenian worship,
but I'm not a liturgical expert, so I'm I'm not
one to to really talk about the liturgical side of things.
So you'd have to speak to perhaps a member of

(15:31):
the Armenian clergy or a member of the of the
church to sort of explain the differences between, you know,
the different liturgies. I mean, they have a raised alter,
there's a curtain that comes across at various parts of
the liturgy, and the liturgy is in Grabba, the old

(15:52):
Armenian which most Armenians probably struggle to understand. So it's
it's a church which has retained its old ritual customs.
It has eased some of the during the twentieth century,
they ease some of the restrictions. For example, priests were

(16:12):
you know, had to fast before the liturgy for I
think it was quite you know, extended period of time.
You know, there were restrictions on marriage of clergy, if
the priest was widowed, whether he could remarry, this type
of thing, and you know, the fasts were cut down.
They allowed the organ to be played in church to

(16:36):
accompany the choir. As this sort of change happened. The
Armenian Church chose to make those changes in the early
nineteen twenties under the early years of Soviet rule. So
it is a church which has developed to a certain extent,
but it's very conservative in terms of any changes to rituals.

(16:56):
It takes a lot of sort of consultation to change
its liturgical practices.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Okay, now you've spoken about the relationship between the Armenian
Church and the both the Tsars and the Soviet regime.
During the Tsaris regime, was there freedom of wortupal out
and more. Armenians basically allowed to have all the normal

(17:29):
whatever freedoms that ordinary Russian citizens had at the time.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
Well, they weren't Russian citizens, they were Russian subjects, so
people didn't really have rights. But the non Orthodox faiths
were all billed as foreign, they had the title foreign faiths,
and they were much more restricted even than the Russian Orthodox.
And for example, the Armenian Church is one of the

(17:57):
few of historic churches that I know where the lay
where the laity played quite a decisive role in electing
the new head of the church as a national ecclesiastical
assembly where the catholicos is elected and about two thirds
of the delegates are lay people, so that made it

(18:21):
more difficult to control the church and to control the
choice of new leader. And in the Tsarist era they
had to present the two candidates of the tsars, and
for the Tsar to approve the candidate, then the Catholicos
had to travel all the way to Saint Petersburg to

(18:41):
the Royal court to be formally approved, which was quite
a long journey from in those days before railways and
so on. It was quite an arduous journey. That all
fell into abeyance when after the Bolshevitz came to power
in Russia, when Armenia and Georgia and Azerbaijohn proclaimed they're

(19:06):
independence and were independent states for a couple of years,
all these sorts of controls fell away. In fact, with
the provisional government in Petrograd in nineteen seventeen, they abolished
many of the restrictions or just allowed them to lapse,
so the church had a lot more freedom. But then
the Soviets then soon rode back on this and the

(19:29):
choice of leader was a pretty crucial element in the church.
And it's quite interesting during my research on this book,
because you know, we've been able to raid the Soviet
archives or former Soviet archives for the last twenty thirty

(19:51):
years from the early nineteen nineties, and you can see
them in Moscow in Kiev, in Yerevan, in Tubilisi, in
loads of different places. But I've never seen anything before
looking at the way that the Soviets approved the choice

(20:12):
of leaders of major churches, like the Russian patriarch for example.
Even now, I'm not aware of scholars who really looked
at how the successive patriarchates were chosen by the state,
because obviously they were chosen by the Communist Party KGB,
the Soviet state, not by the church. The Armenian Church

(20:34):
was far more difficult to control because of this, the
element of the lay people who are involved in choosing
the Catholic ast, and also crucially because all the dioceses
of the Church around the world had delegates, so many
of the delegates were from abroad, and the Soviets did

(20:55):
everything in their power to make sure that their candidate
was elected. I'll come onto the nineteen fifty five election
where vas Gen was elected. That is fascinating what I've
been able to find on that. But during the Soviet period,
the pre communist era, Katholikos died in nineteen thirty he

(21:20):
had more or less withdrawn into silence, So in nineteen
thirty two they had an election so delegates were finally
allowed to come from the diaspora from within the country,
and they the Soviet did not get their favorite candidate elected.
Their candidate was Kevok Cherokchian senior archbishop, but Kevok Muradyan

(21:43):
was the one who was chosen by the delegates. Neither
of them were known anti Soviet campaigners or troublemakers. They
were just trying to help the church survive. But it's
interesting that at that stage, while the Russian Orthodox Church
were not allowed to have a patriarch, the patriarch had

(22:05):
died and they had no official leader, no headlining leader.
The Armenians were allowed to elect to catholicasts. He was
murdered by the NKVD in Echmiadzine in nineteen thirty eight.
This is something that the armeni In church within the

(22:27):
Soviet Union tried to avoid speaking about. Many of some
of the bishops who executed many of the clergy were
shot as well, and the church basically tried to avoid
speaking about this. So thirty eight the Armenian Communist leadership
proposed to Stalin that the whole church headquarters should be

(22:51):
closed down Echmadzine, their monastery just outside Yerevan, the Armenian
capital should be shut down. They should never be allowed
to elect a new leader. And the Communist Party secretary
in Armenia spoke to Stalin about this and Stalin did
not approve this. Stalin obviously is a Georgian, he was

(23:14):
familiar with the church. It's impossible to tell why Stalin
chose not to do this, so he could quite easily
have done it. In nineteen thirty eight, really, at the
height of the stalin His purges, people are being executed
by the tens of thousands. They've already killed the catholic as,
they've already executed some of the bishops, the clergy. Many

(23:38):
of the clergy have left there if they haven't been arrested,
they've left their positions as priests. Then came Second World
War nineteen forty one. I think the mood was already changing.
In nineteen forty one the regime was looking a bit
more favorably on the church, and nineteen forty one they
decided they would allow an election to go ahead. But

(24:01):
it was since spring nineteen forty one, so before the
Germans invaded the Soviet Union. So while Nazi Germany and
the Soviet Union were allies. They allowed this election to
go ahead, but there were so few people who attended
that they really felt that it was just not appropriate
to elect. It would be impossible to elect a catholicost

(24:24):
that would command respect, and you needed three bishops for
the consecration consecration, so they decided to abandon the attempt,
and the second ranking candidate, Kevork direct Chian from the
nineteen thirty two election. He was officially appointed as the

(24:46):
acting Catholic OSTs the Lockham tenants in nineteen forty five.
As soon as the Second World War is over. Then
the Soviets allowed the assembly to go ahead and Kevork
was duly elect. He was clearly the state's choice. There
was really no one else from among the Soviet bishops

(25:06):
who were still alive who would really have been been suitable,
so it was really Hobson's choice. The delegates really had
no one else they could go for. Even just before
they Stalin had received Kevork in the Kremlin about ten
days before the final capture of Berlin, So even while

(25:31):
the Second World War was still going on in Europe,
while the Soviets were fighting like mad to get to
Berlin before the Americans, Stalin was taking time to talk
to the acting Armenian catholicos. So I think by that
stage they realized that they needed well all the main

(25:53):
church is to be re established, the Moscow Patriarchate. The
bishops had met Stalin in the Kremlin three of their
bishops in nineteen forty three and again in nineteen forty five.
So by this stage the Soviets have worked out a
new model of how to control communities. They'd have, you know,
hierarchs which were basically under control, and they would control

(26:17):
the churches. They'd have limited number of functioning places of worship,
and everyone needed registration. The clergy needed registration, the parish
needed registration. So so Kevoc dies in nineteen fifty four
of natural causes. But this is the fascinating thing. Nineteen
fifty five, they realize that there is no bishop in

(26:42):
the Soviet Union. There's only three bishops left. With the
death of Kvoc. Death of Kevoc, there are only three
bishops left, all of them elderly, and they do not
command much respect. Perhaps the most active of them was
very unpopular among the other clergy. So the KGB, the

(27:06):
Council for the affairs to the Armenian Church, the Soviet
government body in Armenia that controlled religious affairs, the polit Bureau,
the Central Committee in Moscow. They all started thinking, well,
we've got to allow an election to go ahead. We
need someone that we trust and is credible. And the
one thing they really feared was that the if they

(27:31):
didn't elect someone, the diaspora community would say, we've got
to move the headquarters of the church away from Soviet
Armenia to Lebanon. The other catholic Os of the church
in Antilias in Beirut, he had his diocese, and there
was a fear in the Kremlin that the whole church

(27:51):
would migrate to the diaspra, which is the last thing
they wanted. So they realized that they'd have to bring
in a bishop from abroad, so they chose Yegishe de
dery An from Jerusalem. He was from the Jerusalem Patriarchate,
one of the four main centers of the church as
the center in Echemunit in Armenian in Soviet Domini, then

(28:14):
in Antilias in Beirut, the other catholic os eight. Then
there are two patriarchates in one in Istanbul Constantinople and
the other in Jerusalem. So they chose Yegyshe de derry An,
and he was the bishop that Kevor thought would be
his successor. He was his favorite candidate. So they got

(28:36):
this approved through Suzlaf the ideologist up in Moscow, and
you know, they were sort of sailing on towards this. Well,
what I discovered I was in contact with the grandson
of the main Armenian KGB official, Mark Chamcian, who was

(28:56):
in charge of religion, and he he wrote his memoirs
about fifty pages typewritten memoirs in Russian in the nineties,
and in that he describes what was termed Operation Revival
or Rebirth, which was KGB operation. They champ Chian started

(29:20):
looking at dead derry Anne and realized he was the
last person they should ever allow to get anywhere near
Etchman had seen and the catholicos position. They obviously he
through KGB channels they got information on him. They were
tracking the clergy anyway, whether in the diaspora or abroad.

(29:43):
And he described him as very loose in his morals.
He liked to go to nightclubs, play cards with women,
drinkle off and so on, and He was also a
poet and very unpredicted. When he realized this was not
the sort of per that they should allow anywhere near
Etche medicine. They realized he would only come to it.

(30:06):
He wouldn't become a Soviet citizen go and live there.
He'd try and run the church from Jerusalem and come
maybe visit once or twice a month, or every few months.
Mark cham Chan realized, this is not the guy that
we should choose, so he started looking around at the
other clergy that any bishop was eligible. So he looked

(30:28):
around at all the bishops, and he lighted on Vazgen
Bajian from Rumania, who was a relatively junior bishop. He
was among the youngest of the bishops. He was not
internationally prominent, but they had a chance to examine him
closely in Moscow and Yerevan on several visits. He decided,

(30:50):
this is the guy that I believe is the most
suitable fellows. He first of all had to persuade his
own boss within the army in KGB, then convince the
head of the Armeni in KGB, Georghi Badam Yantz. Then
he had they had to convince the Armenian Central Committee,
and then they had to go to Moscow to convince

(31:14):
the Moscow KGB and the the polit Bureau of the
Central Committee. And so Champian describes quite interestingly in his
memoirs how he was sent to Moscow to talk to
the KGB there to put the case. And they finally
came round to this in Moscow, and they sent Champcian

(31:37):
and an officer from Moscow from the Russian from KGB
to Bucharest in nineteen fifty five. So we're looking very
just a few months before the election to check him out.
So they arrive in you know, the Senate like they've
arrived in Moscow. They champion and convince, you know, they

(32:01):
finally approve him as a choice. They'd say, right, you're
going to Bucharest. The next day he goes to an
officer he's never worked with before, Russian. They arrive in
Bucharest and they realize that vas Gen is not in Romania.
He's actually visiting Bulgaria, which was also part of his diocese.
So they had to wait a couple of days for
him to return. Then when he comes back, they quiz

(32:23):
him in his flat, would you take on this position,
and what are the conditions you'd have to accept, And
they really have a quite cautious but blunt discussion, and
Vasgen actually agrees. He spoke about this very rarely, only

(32:48):
really in the nineteen nineties, about how officials came and
he billed them as being from the Armenian government when
in fact they were from the KGB. And I'm sure
he knew that they were from the KGB, but he
agreed to the conditions that he wouldn't act in an
anti Soviet way, he'd you know, respect the set up provide,
and he got guarantees that he wouldn't be persecuted. And

(33:10):
the other thing was, obviously he was not married. As
a bishop of the armeni In church, he wanted to
bring his widowed mother with him, so that was quite
an important element. Would they allow his mother to come?
So basically the position then was that the everyone has
agreed him as a candidate. Now how do they push

(33:31):
this to the delegates from all around the world and
from within the Soviet Union to make them choose Vasgen
seemingly of their own free will? So basically, you know,
like any event in the Soviet Union that KGB were
all over it. They brought in agents from many parts

(33:52):
of the country because they didn't have enough people locally.
So because there was one hundred and seventy hundred and
eighty who assembled for this church assembly, so they brought
them all in. And you know, they were keeping surveillance
over the foreign delegates in their hotel room, so they

(34:12):
had hidden microphones. There was one who was one bishop
from the Middle East who was opposed to choosing Vazgen
and the KGB. This was not from Chamchad's memoirs, but
from another KGB officer. They set him up with a
female KGB officer in a flat and they filmed them

(34:36):
having sex and showed him the photos in the morning
and got him to agree that he wouldn't oppose Vazgen,
he would support his candidacy. I think champ cham was
probably too embarrassed and mentioned that one in his memoirs.
I don't know who the bishop was, and you know
this other officer didn't say either, So you know, all

(35:00):
were taken to ensure that Vasgen was elected. When you
get memoirs like this that come out of the blue,
as a historian, you always have to check the veracity
of them as far as you can, and this was

(35:22):
this was you know, I had to be suitably skeptical,
suitably cautious about them, but I couldn't. I believe they're genuine.
I believe they were written in good faith. I don't
agree with everything that champ Jan wrote in his memoirs.
He was very critical of the post independence Armenian state.

(35:44):
He felt they were, you know, selling out the populational
rest of it. Anyway, you know, those were his own views.
You know, not for me to say whether he was
right or on to hold them. But the part about
this operation, every part of it that was possible to
cross check, turned out to be verifiable, the parts about

(36:10):
his visit to Bucharest to talk to Vasgen and to
agree his candidacy before the election. Vasgen spoke about this
in an interview in the nineteen nineties, even if he
didn't identify CHAMPI channel say some KGB. There was a
document that I got where the KGB is talking to

(36:34):
the Central Committee ahead of the election about how Vasgen
is the candidate and giving a potted biography of him
and saying that he's the candidate that would be acceptable
to choose as a new Catholic ost and various other
sort of elements of his story. They match what is
verifiable because not all KGB archives are open. They're not

(36:58):
open in Moscow, they're not opening Yerevan, and therefore you
can't verify these things. Interestingly, Champcian got in touch with
the KGB in Yerevan in the nineteen nineties when he
was writing these memoirs and asked to see the files
for this operation, and they didn't respond in writing, but

(37:23):
they phoned him, and he made a note at the
time on the bottom of his original written application to
see the files, saying that the officer of the KGB
told him that the files had been destroyed. And I
very much doubt whether the KGB would have destroyed these files.
They do destroy files. They did destroy files at various stages,

(37:47):
just to make space and because they felt they wouldn't
need them. But I suspect somewhere out there these files
are still there.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Could you.

Speaker 7 (37:57):
I mean, for what you've said, it appears that Soviet
policy towards the Armenian Church was in any way similar
to the Soviet policy towards the Russian Orthodox Church, and
in particular the decision to after World War two to
allow the church limited independence was motivated by a desire

(38:19):
to use it in foreign relations. Certainly, the Russian Orthodox
Church has played a role in foreign affairs. An influential
role was that the case of the Armenian Church. Also
did the KGB or the government find that they could
try to use the Armenian prelates as supporters of Soviet

(38:41):
foreign policy.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
Oh very much so. They often spoke, for example about publications,
so they allowed e schmazine to produce sort of books
of sermons by Vazgen or books about his travels, or
even the main journal Echhmadzine, which was supposedly a monthly
journal the equivalent of the journal of the Moscow Patriarchate

(39:04):
or Fraternal Herald, that the Baptists were allowed to publish.
This They often described this as being mainly for foreign
diasper market, so you know, and it was very common
in documents to see the way that any actions were

(39:27):
would be interpreted in the diasper as a crucial element
to why a decision was taken. But also they recruited
many leaders the clergy as KGB agents, as has happened
with all faiths in the Soviet Union, where the Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Orthodox, whatever,

(39:52):
but those included foreign based clergy, which was quite interesting,
and they always wanted them abroad to be promoted the
role of the church, loyalty to Soviet Armenia, loyalty to Echmiadzine,
because by the nineteen fifties there were very conflictual relations

(40:14):
between the Catholic oss eight in Antilias in Beirut and
the Catholic oss eight in ech Miadzine. That they were
the Beirute antilias. One was seen to be very sort
of Western American oriented, and some people believe that it
declared you were in the pay of the CIA or
supportive of the US. And on the other side, Echmadzine

(40:38):
was very much supporting the Soviet Union, Soviet positions. The
Catholic ass of Asgen was always had to sign all
these declarations condemning US action in Vietnam or plans for
a neutron bomb, or whatever Soviet political aim there was.

(40:59):
Vasgen had to take part in it. You know. The
even suggestions that he should join a letter to condemn
Sojernitzen at one point, although I can't find that the
letter was ever actually published, but you know, they they
sent it to these leaders, or they determined that these leaders,
the Russian Orthodots and other leaders would sign it, and

(41:20):
Vazgen was one of the people that they put down
as someone to sign it. And really Vazgen had very
little choice with these things, yes, very much. They saw
the church as a way to consolidate the diasper around
Soviet Armenia, to neutralize the Dashnak party, which was the
main Armenian opposition party in the diaspora, which had quite

(41:44):
strong control over the Antili cathodic oss Aid in Beirut
to do everything to try to fight them and to
resist them. But the KGB were also working on the
Dashnaks and buy the sort of late seventies early eighties,
they probably had so many agents in the Dashnaks that

(42:05):
they were able to neutralize them and for the Dashnats
really to recognize that Soviet Armenia, although it wasn't an
independent state, it was at least some a place where
the Armenians could call their home. It was an Armenian homeland.
So they managed that. The Soviets managed to neutralize the

(42:26):
Dashnets in the end, but the church was crucial. But
at the same time, vas Gen and other church leaders
in Armenia, they played this very cleverly for all its worth.
Whenever there were churches closed, or whenever the Soviets refused
to open a church or reopen a church that they

(42:48):
were pushing for, then vas Gen and other bishops would
always use the argument, you know, this will not go
down well in the giaspraa. How can I explain this
to them? You know they're looking at this, they know
what's happened. You know this is going to cast the
Soviet Union in a negative light, and that all we
don't want this, do we? And this was quite a

(43:09):
successful argument that the Vasgen deployed, and the more visible
he was in the diaspora, the more difficult it became
for the Soviets to ignore his representations. Because Vasgen he

(43:29):
was elected in nineteen fifty five. In nineteen fifty six,
he made a huge trip through the Middle East to
Bay Route because he was trying to, you know, the
Soviets wanted him to prevent a Dashnak pro American candidate
being elected Catholic oss in Antilias in be Route. He
failed in that. He then went to Cairo, the Jordanians

(43:55):
refused to allow him into East Jerusalem, which was under
Jordanian rule. He then went to Europe. He went to Italy,
where there was some discussion as to whether he would
meet the pope or not, but that seems to have
fallen apart. He went to Paris, he met the French President,
he met various key people there, came to London, he

(44:15):
met the Archbishop Canterbury, who hosted him for several days.
He met various foreign office people, various church people in
the Anglican Church. And that was the first of many
of his foreign visits. And when you think how many
times did a Russian Orthodox patriarch or Georgian Orthodox patriarch

(44:37):
travel around the world and not when they went, they
didn't really have much of a flock to be ministering too.
Whereas Vasgen there were more than half the Armenian population
lived outside Soviet Armenia. So there were dioceses which were
directly under his control in the Middle East, in Western Europe,

(44:58):
in North America, even in Latin amer He went to
Latin America several times. There were extensive journeys across the
United States, and this was a time when the US
was the main adversary of the Soviet Union, so he
he was actually better traveled than the Soviet leadership. He

(45:21):
he met key politicians around the world, prime ministers, presidents,
key political figures, key religious figures, key cultural figures. There
are a lot of writers that he met. He met
uh Simond de Beauvois and Jean Paul Sartre, for example,

(45:43):
when they visited Echmadzin, and he received them and you know,
the nice friendly chat. There are all kinds of people
that he met. Steinbeck went, you know, Sarayan, the American
writer of William Sara and of Armenian descent. He went,
you know, and he sort of became friends. He was

(46:06):
quite good at making people like him, so he met
a vast array of people that the Soviet leaders just
had no access to, so he had to be treated
with some respect. When he came back from his first
visit to the Middle East, he was met by received
by Nicolai Bulgargin Bulgannin, the main Soviet leader at that

(46:29):
point in the post Stalin era. You know, he never
managed to get a meeting with Krishtchyov, who then became
the leader. But he had access to so many people
and he was able to use that to his advantage,
to the church's advantage. He never managed to get a

(46:51):
decent number of churches open in the Soviet Union. The
maximum he ever had was about fifty and that was
really not men for a flock that you know, could
it could have been a lot bigger, and especially in
He only had churches in a few in Russia, two
in three and then two in Azerbai john two in

(47:15):
Georgia and the rest in Armenia. So he really, you know,
holds swathes of the Soviet Union as it was then.
With Armenian communities, he was not allowed to have churches,
despite pushing for them on many occasions.

Speaker 6 (47:33):
Were relationship meaning to the authority is there between the
Armenian theolocust and Armenia and Kokoi and other places.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Uh, well, the the Georgian Catholic oss patriarch, they were
sort of neighbors and I think they got on reasonably,
although you know, there's some sort of long standing Georgian
Armenian tensions over ownership of churches and attempts to rubbish
each other's history and claim that this church was not

(48:09):
built by this lot but by another lot. There were
a lot of rather unpleasant academic disputes on during the
later Soviet period as nationalism kind of began to emerge.
He was obviously he went to India and was in
very close contact with the Malankara Church there, which was

(48:30):
a sister church in the Oriental family. Yeah, with the
you know, the Copts, the Ethiopians, Ethiopians particularly, although that
was mainly with you know, highly Selassie rather than the
church leadership, but yeah, they did. He was very keen
to establish fraternal ties. But also he liked churches like

(48:56):
the Anglican Church for example, where he was very friendly
with various Anglican Church of England leaders in Britain, but
also you know from the United States Episcopal ones as
well who would visit. But he liked other Christian churches
which respected the autonomy of the Armenian Church, and he

(49:20):
respected their autonomy, so they wouldn't interfere in Armenian church
life and he wouldn't interfere in their church life. So
you know, I think there's a sort of non aggression
pack that he had, and that's why I think perhaps
he was a little wary of the Catholics because I

(49:40):
think historically the tensions between the Armenian Catholics and the
Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Vatican's activity in the Middle East,
you know, trying to create or encourage or support Eastern
Right churches of various ethnic cities in the Middle East.

(50:01):
I think he saw that as a potential threat, whereas
the Church of England he didn't see that as a threat.
The Anglicans wanted to establish warm relations and they went
to quite you know, great lengths to encourage this, even
you know, during the nineteen forties, even during the nineteen

(50:23):
thirties they were trying to encourage links when you know,
they were completely unaware that the Catholic Gods was dead.
They were still trying to send greetings and so on.
The Church was very much in favor of ecumenical into
Christian relations. Encouraged the Vasghen to get the Armenian Church

(50:44):
to join the World Counts of Churches, which I finally
did in nineteen sixty two along with group of other
Soviet based churches. Yeah. So, but it's interesting, for example,
the Church of England bishops when the Holy Women priests
came up in the Church of England when they went
to Moscow, to the Moscow Patriarchate. Relations were very frosty

(51:10):
because of that, and the Russian Orthodox clergy were very
cold when they received them. There's no warmth at all.
They said, look, you know this will really harm relations.
They get down to Armenia on the same trip and
the meanings are very warm and no, well, if you
do it, well it's not for us, but you know,

(51:30):
if you do it, it's not going to harm relations. You know,
we've got a different culture background here, so you know,
it's unthinkable for the Armenians. But you know, if you
do it, that's up to you. You know, you've got
your conditions there, so you know. So that was a
very typical vuzzgen sort of response. It was not necessarily

(51:51):
theologically grounded, more kind of culturally grounded perhaps, and you
know tradition be minded and saying, you know, we do
our thing, you to yours, will all be friends. You know,
you can do what you like, we'll do what we like,
will still be friends.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Intermedia today, is a younger generation becoming secularized or is
the Christian faith in the air manager it's still strong.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Well, I think it's like anywhere there's you know, people
are keen on the faith and people who have always
been indifferent. I mean, Soviet atheism was strongly rooted, and
despite what people claim is the revival of faith in
many of these countries. You look at Russia now and
church going is you know, people look at the figures

(52:47):
and maybe four percent of the population or something, you know,
so it's it's a pretty loathing. So the atheist or
anti religious heritage is there, and you know, some people
are very suspicious of the church and the clergy because
of it. You know, you have people people's sort of
memories of their parents. Oh, you know, my mum said

(53:10):
that all priests are thieves and scoundrels.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
You know.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
So I've never trusted the church. You know, coaching come
up with people whose recollections, you know, they have mentioned
this sort of attitude. I haven't studied the church in
detail since well, I took the story up to the
independence was in nineteen ninety one. I took the story
out to nineteen ninety four when Vazgen died. I've not

(53:35):
studied the situation more recently. It's very complicated because of
splits within the church. There's a lot of rowing going on,
and the spats between the Prime Minister and the church
and the arrests of bishops, and as a very polarized society.
And I haven't followed that. Follow Every twist and turn

(53:59):
of that arga is very complicated, and so you know,
you have to speak to people who've been following that
in detail to get a better picture of that.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Do you have any sense whether in the the aspra
the our meaning identity continues through the generations? I mean,
I know, and a lot of a lot of listen
in the United States, for example, numerous ethnic groups, whether
from Western or Eastern Europe have after a few generations,
they really don't identify anymore, They've lost the language and

(54:33):
so on. You have any sense of whether that's playing
up with your menius?

Speaker 4 (54:38):
Well, I think because Armenians tend to have very strong
self identity as Armenians. The language of culture, of the
background the faith is important, but that doesn't always translate
into an actual practicing faith. In like anywhere, they've got
a big network of churches which are also kind of

(55:01):
cultural centers. People go there not just to worship, but
to hear Armenian spoken, to catch up with their friends
and family and so on. So they tend to be
the community focal point. There are also political parties that
are active in the diasper, and cultural centers and sporting
outfits and camps and so on. Like any diasper, some

(55:26):
people have lost their knowledge of the language. Others retain
it very closely, and you know, want to bring up
their children speak Armenian. So it's very much a mixed bag,
you know. Then it becomes, like with many diaspora churches,
a battle do you continue to hold liturgy and sermons

(55:48):
and publications in Armenian in this case, or even well
in the Armenian churches even Graba the old Armenian or
do you migrate to English or maybe Spanish? I don't know,
you know, it's a dilemma that many diasperate churches face

(56:08):
as people become integrated in society. But for example, in
my book, you've got the various people who were leaving
Armenia in the late nineteen eighties during the fighting with Azerbai,
john ovn Igorna Carabac. There's also huge poverty in Armenia.

(56:28):
The nuclear power station was closed down, so there was
no power for much of the day and the country
more or less ground to a halt, and many people
chose to flee before they left. Many people would if
they'd never been baptized. They go for baptism because they
wanted to make themselves a regal Armenian. Well that was

(56:49):
if that was the extent of their faith, then you know,
that raises a lot of questions. The priest in Moscow
at that time was you know, spoke pretty frankly about this, saying, well,
you know, baptizing such people, I know it's a sin,
but you know I have to do it. These people
are coming for baptism, and you know, there wasn't really

(57:10):
time to prepare them for baptism and to make sure
that this was a conscious choice to adopt the Christian faith.
It was just a cultural ritual, and in fact it
was quite strongly rooted even during the Soviet period. And
because especially as a christianov, you needed both parents to

(57:33):
agree to the baptism and to be identified as having
baptized their child. What happened was people were baptized in secret,
and then later on it transpired that some babies have
been baptized several times. You know, maybe their mom had
taken them, then one of their grandma's had taken them,
then another grandma had taken them, not knowing that another

(57:55):
relative had already had them baptized. So you know, some
babies were back tize three four times. So you know,
being baptized is seen as crucial. They say, well, you're baptized,
you're not a Turk. If you're not baptized, your Turk
and being Turkish, clearly because of the genocide, is the
almost the biggest insult among Armenians. So they really saw

(58:20):
being baptized a crucial element in Armenian identity and that's
still the case in especially in the diaspora. But whether
that translates into a real faith, and it varies from
person to person.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
I remember seeing seven years ago of a YouTube video
when Armenia was having a warwith as yours At, a
number of new soldiers were getting baptized, right they winning
the battle, and it seems kind of perfunctory.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
That's right again, that was that was mainly It's difficult
to divine people's motives, but that seemed to me to
be mainly based on because they were fighting as Armenians
against Azerbaijanis who were Muslim or deemed to be Muslim
or of Muslim background. This was their core identity, and

(59:16):
particularly in battle, they would mark tanks and rifles and
you know, the straps of their rifles with crosses, and
the back of their uniform. And when they captured Shushah,
the hilltop town in the old center of Karabak, the
historic capital of the region. The Armenians had Stepanaket as

(59:40):
their capital, which was below it, and shusha was on
the top of the hill and they all masked to
capture it in nineteen ninety two. Just before they went
into battle, all the soldiers painted huge crosses on their backs,
and you know, some of the people who saw this sad,

(01:00:01):
you know, it looked like a you know, the Crusades
in the Middle Ages. But then other people were saying, look,
it's just so we can identify each other and so
we don't shoot our own people. You know, it's just
for self identification, because they knew that the Azerbaijanis were
not going to do This's like you're looking at pictures
from the Ukraine War. The Ukrainians have these blue tags
around their helmets, around their arms, you know, and the

(01:00:23):
Russians have yellow or whatever, or the Russians have these
symbols paint the V or the Z painted on their
armored cars. I mean in battle when things are fast moving,
especially in the dark. They captured shusha Many in the dark.
Then you've got to be had to see who's your
on your side and who's on the enemy side. So
you know, was this an affirmation of their faith and

(01:00:44):
the Christian crusade against the Azerbaijanis to capture Shushah or
was it just a useful symbol to they had to
put something onto to self identify. Was it that? And
the baptisms were part of this. This was identifying yourself.
You were part of a communal team, historic mission to capture,

(01:01:10):
reclaim or to assert the claim over this land which
their ancestors had lived in. They saw themselves as in
a historic continuity and being part of this bigger community
was part of They looked to their monuments Ganzasa Monastery
in Amaras. Monastery Amaras was you know, the original site

(01:01:32):
was from the fourth century or something. Ghanzasar was much later.
But the church is you know, historic church. And they
were looking at these as their symbols of their identity
as Karabaki Armenians, even though many of them spoke Russian.
You'd hear them talking among themselves even when they spoke Armenian,

(01:01:53):
especially when they'd started to discuss military terms. They you know,
they then switched to Russian. When they got angry, they
switched to Russian, which is usually a sign that Russian
was actually their default language. But you know, once the
caravan movement started, people tried to turn to Armenian. Like
in Ukraine, many people who now who Russian speakers, have

(01:02:18):
switched to Ukrainian. Being baptized was part of being an Armenian.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
Andrew, we were out of time. Now, did you want
to bring up anything?

Speaker 7 (01:02:30):
No, thank you, not that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:02:35):
So your book is called Catholics and Commissar is up. Correct.

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
Yeah, there's two very hefty volumes. It's about fifteen hundred
pages so, published by Gomidas Press here in London, and
the publisher has done a handsome job in producing a
nicely produced copy. Each volume unfortunately cost sixty dollars, so
quite a price tag. But the book is based on

(01:03:02):
Soviet archives, interviews I've done with people, memoirs, people have
newspaper articles. The archives also not only from the former
Soviet archives but from Lambeth Palace here in London. The
Church of England Archives. There's documents from other religious communities.
For example, you know Cardinal Villebrand's when he went on visits.

(01:03:25):
You know, there were reports that he wrote and other things.
The reports with a couple of people at the Second
Vatican Council where the Armenian Church Center observers, so trying
to draw in all manner of evidence and report. Travel books.
There are quite a few books where people visited Soviet

(01:03:45):
Armeniam for a short time. Some of them, even in
the nineteen thirties, are the real height of the purges,
when it was actually dangerous, and you know, they record
their observations and some of them are pretty telling because
there are many observation about the decline of churches, how
decrepit they are. There's some a British archaeologist who went

(01:04:07):
in nineteen thirty eight. So after the Catholic ASTs have
been murdered, he goes to one of the monasteries. He
doesn't know that the Catholic cost is dead, and he
describes the you know, the the old monk there and
he's allowed to sleep in the monastery. The place there's
a room where there's a couple of old, rusting beds
that he's allowed to sleep in. He's surprised that he

(01:04:29):
hasn't been devoured by bedbugs or flees in the night,
you know. And he says that when this monk, these
monks die, they're not going to be replaced. This is
the basically the end. The church is going to die.
And this was written at the time, in nineteen thirty eight, so,
you know, just trying to find these random scattered reports

(01:04:51):
just to add a picture that you know, rounded picture
to give the human touch, not just to rate what
the governments or the Soviet officials chose to record about
the church, but just to record the human experience of
members of the church as well.

Speaker 6 (01:05:09):
Thank you, I thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Okay, well let's let's conclude then with hell Mary in
the middle, others long experience, Men, Mary, full grace. The
Lord is with the pleasure them women, and blessed is
for I will Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God. Gray
Rose singers now, and thank you very very much for
being our guest today. Enjoyed us very much.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
Thank you very much for inviting me on.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Hello, God's Beloved. I'm Annabel Moseley, author professor of theology
and host of them Sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood
on w c A T Radio. I invite you to
listen in and find inspiration along this sacred journey. We're
traveling together to me our lives a masterpiece and with

(01:06:02):
God's grace, become saints. Join me Annabel Moseley for then
sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood on WCAT Radio. God
bless you. Remember you are never alone. God is always
with you.

Speaker 7 (01:06:24):
Thank you for listening to a production of WCAT Radio.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
Please join us in our mission of evangelization, and

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Don't forget Love lifts up when knowledge takes flight.