Product Description

The shocking truth about Russia s spy network in the US and the brutal suppression of democracy in Russia. Former KGB Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky gives his informed perspective about Putin s real intentions in America, the looming danger posed by the infiltration of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad by the re KGB, and how Putin has already shut down freedom of speech and free enterprise in Russia s still-born democracy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1255817 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
Preobrazhensky's book can be called a work of an investigative journalist who has studied the development of a church takeover with his own eyes, and comments on it - all this emanating from his own work experience in the KGB. For those who lived under the the Soviet regime, it is difficult to doubt Mr. Preobrazhensky's deductions. In Post-Soviet times, the Kremlin cannot any longer count on those who in the past sympathized and helped the First State in World of Workers and Peasants. Now the Kremlin's hope is that the parishioners of R.O.C.O.R. could carry out the function of a fifth column, driven by nostalgic and religious feeling. And there are millions of them, all immigrants from Russia. --Novoe Russkoe Slovo, Russian Language Daily in New York

This book addresses one of the unforeseen developments of the consolidation within the Russian Orthodox Churches that can have significant counter-intelligence implications for the United States and the Western world. It is not incredible to contemplate how Russian intelligence can very cynically use even Russian Priests to implement its intelligence agenda. --Paul M. Joyal Director PSS at National Strategies, Inc. Former Director of Security for U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence

This book is an extremely valuable contribution to the efforts of investigation of treasonous activities among the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (R.O.C.O.R.) now attached to the Moscow patriarchate. --Eugene L. Magerovsky, Ph. D., Colonel., Strategic Intelligence, U.S. Army, Retired Professor of Russian History

About the Author
Konstantin Preobrazhensky is an internationally respected intelligence expert and specialist on Japan. Born in Moscow, Russia in 1953, Mr. Preobrazhensky earned his M.A. from Moscow University in 1976 from the Institute of Asia and Africa. Upon graduation, Mr. Preobrazhensky worked for the KGB until 1991 where he obtained the rank of Colonel. In his last post, he served as the personal advisor to Major General Leonid Zaitsev on matters involving China, Korea, and Japan. Having been caught talking with one of his Chinese recruits in 1985, he was arrested by Japanese officials and was soon forcibly returned to Moscow by Soviet officials. Though the reason was unknown, Mr. Preobrazhensky was blamed by the KGB. Subsequently, he suffered much undeserved humiliation, which he chronicled in his best seller: The Spy Who Loved Japan. He is the author of seven books on the KGB and Japan.

Customer Reviews

The Devil in the Details
I just finished reading the new book by former KGB Col. Konstantin Preobrazhensky-- KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent (Gerard Group Publishing, 2008.) It is truly frightening to read this material, somewhat similar to the feeling one has in reading the published Mitrokhin archival material in The Sword and the Shield. I grew up in America in the 1960's learning how to "duck and cover" under my desk in the event of a Soviet missle launch, but later began to view American paranoia about Russia and the KGB as somewhat comical, especially after perestroika and the fall of the former Soviet Union. I had read some of Col. Preobrazhensky's articles on the internet during the past two years, but his book on the KGB and Russian Emigration had never, to my knowledge, been translated into English.

This book is a collection of Preobrazhensky's observations and anecdotes about KGB/FSB involvement in the religious affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate and the exiled White Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) during the past few decades. He also discusses his own history as an agent and journalist working within the KGB in Japan and Russia prior to his seeking asylum in the U.S. in 2003. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking of the famous dictum from President Vladimir Putin to the effect that "there is no such thing as a FORMER KGB agent..." Somehow, Preobrazhensky, unlike his old friend Alexander Litvinenko, has lived to tell the tale of life within the KGB before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of the permutations of the Russian foreign intelligence service during the Presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

What is most disturbing about these revelations are the fairly detailed descriptions of KGB propaganda techniques and recruitment methods, based upon the experiences of Preobrazhensky (and Vladimir Putin, himself) during his training years in the KGB. It all seems a bit surreal to an average American Joe like myself, but certainly offers a plausible explanation for what has happened to the ROCOR in America during the past two decades. For example, as I was reading Preobrazhensky's description of the old KGB/FSB "blueprint" for the takeover of ROCOR parishes in America, I discerned the exact series of events that had transpired in my own American ROCOR parish after 2000-- first, the appointment of a nationalistic, "Soviet" rector, then the gradual (or even sudden) replacement of the old American parish council and warden with mysterious recent Soviet emigres. I didn't realize at the time that the Moscow Patriarchate would simply annex the ROCOR by May of 2007.

I have never been big on conspiracy theories, in general, and I am all too familiar with our American propensity for collective paranoia, but this book, overall, seems quite credible and well documented. The devil is, of course, in the details, as in the case of the Mitrokhin archives, and, if Col. Preobrazhensky is correct, the devil is also now, apparently, in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Excelletn personal soliloquy
Konstantin Preobrazhensky has many stories to tell. He does not tell them particularly well, for his writing is not linear, seems to follow no theme or track but his own achievements. Thus it is a self consciously written book, filled with tidbits of fascinating but essentially incomplete information.
But in the end, he does make his case, with great point and prescience. Given the book's faults, it is nonetheless highly recommnended. There is a great deal to be learned by heeding the basic message.