The figure of Ivan Voronaev (1885-1937), founder of the Soviet Pentecostal movement, occupies a contested place in the history of Eastern European Protestantism. Confessional narratives portray him as an “apostle of the Slavs” and martyr of faith, while Soviet anti-sectarian literature depicted him as a “bourgeois agent” and conduit of foreign influence. Despite their opposition, both approaches largely ignore the Chekist dimension of Voronaev’s biography–his systematic interaction with the Soviet security services and his role in their operational activities as a covert agent. This article reconstructs previously marginalized episodes of Voronaev’s life on the basis of operational, investigative, and reporting materials from VChK–GPU–NKVD1 archives, complemented by confessional sources and memoirs. Focusing on the period 1924–1929, it argues that Soviet Pentecostalism functioned not only as a persecuted movement but, at a certain stage, as an instrument of controlled interconfessional disorganization used by state security organs to weaken other Protestant communities, primarily Evangelical Christians and Baptists (ECB). Within this framework, Voronaev emerges as both a religious leader and a covert GPU agent (“Nepliuev”), illustrating the blurred boundary between missionary activity and political surveillance in the Soviet religious landscape.
Oleksandr Korotaiev (Thu,) studied this question.