Abstract
<jats:p>The purpose of this article is to verify the concept widespread in historiography that interprets the Bolshevik secularization of the 1920s as a “legal” or “formal-legal” process, as well as to identify the mechanisms through which the proclaimed state neutrality toward the institution of the church was transformed into a system of administrative and operational control over it. Research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific methods (analysis and synthesis; inductive and deductive reasoning) and special historical approaches (historical-logical and systemic-structural methods). Scientific novelty of the study lies in the integrated analysis of the restrictions imposed by Soviet legislation in the religious sphere (nationalization of church property, deprivation of legal personality of religious organizations, the system of standard contracts, and registration procedures) together with a reconstruction of the covert, agent-based dimension of this policy implemented by the bodies of the Cheka-GPU. Conclusions. The article demonstrates that the principle of the separation of church and state proclaimed by the Soviet authorities was purely declarative and did not correspond to the actual practice of state-church relations. Based on the analysis of top-secret documents of the GPU and the CP(b)U, it is shown that “separation” functioned rather as a system of managed legalization, within which formal legal mechanisms were combined with covert operational control. The registration of religious communities, standard agreements for the use of property, and various authorization procedures were employed as instruments of selection, filtering, and subordination of religious organizations to party-state policy. A particularly important role in this process was played by the agent infiltration of GPU bodies into the leadership structures of Protestant unions and the "orchestration" of their loyal political stance toward Soviet power. It is shown that this practice of "separation,” which in fact amounted to controlled legalization and declarative loyalty, was purely instrumental and temporary in nature. The transition, after the curtailment of the NEP, to a rigidly repressive model of state-church relations confirmed that the previous policy did not constitute the realization of freedom of conscience but was merely an element of a long-term strategy aimed at the subordination, disorganization, and ultimately the elimination of religious communities.</jats:p>