Lennikov has said he was not given much choice when recruited to work for the agency after his graduation in Japanese studies from the Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok, and he left the KGB's employ as soon as he could.
Fluent in Japanese, Lennikov spent his years with the Soviet Union's much-feared security and intelligence agency monitoring Japanese businesses and translating documents. He said he never felt comfortable with what he saw as the organization's antidemocratic culture.
"Many of them didn't value other people's lives," Lennikov said of his former colleagues, as he sat on a small chair behind the church's pulpit.
"They were obsessed just with their advances in career, and you know, the whole morality of the organization, believing that they're kind of gods, deciding other people's lives.
"For myself, I was swept away by [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev's new policy, openness and honesty, and just was not careful enough in expressing my views at one of the officers' meetings, and it turned out to be that I angered some people. I just sensed it, that something bad was going on behind my back," he said.
His friends in the agency let him know that his resignation in 1988 was seen as the act of a traitor. As soon as he could, Lennikov left Russia, first to work in Japan and then in 1997 to enter graduate school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
His wife and son moved to Canada with him. Lennikov had not revealed his employment history on his student visa application, but listed "Committee for State Security" on his permanent residency application in 1999.
Canadian authorities appeared not to notice its significance until he underwent a personal interview in March 2000, when he explained that the agency was known in the West as the KGB.
That triggered an automatic denial. Lennikov appealed, arguing that -- as a result of his meetings with Canadian security services, during which he gave them full details about his employment with the KGB -- he would be in danger of arrest for treason should he return to Russia.
In a final ruling June 1 from which no further appeal except a humanitarian exemption is possible, Federal Court Judge Russel W. Zinn cited the findings of an assessment officer, who acknowledged that other former agents who left the KGB and its successor agencies had faced reprisals, including arrest.
