The research examines how representatives of higher ecclesiastical circles and clerically educated intellectuals reconciled Russian Orthodox church (ROC) as "the only true catholic and apostolic church" amid transnational contexts of early Cold War confrontation and ecumenical debates, the issue of schisms, and shifts in Soviet religious politics. What role did key intermediaries and transformations of their agency play in the self-repositioning of Russian Orthodoxy within the debates on Peace and Unity? How did the balance between different discourses change in the Russian Orthodox public representations of the 'West' and ecumenical conflict? These questions are addressed in the paper through biographical and institutional analysis of texts published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate and archival correspondence of the World Council of Churches in Geneva (1947-1961). I argue that the interests of the state and the church in positioning Russian and Soviet exclusion and mission in the postwar order initially intersected. Among the outcomes of the church-state rapprochment were the criticism and condemnation of global ecumenical initiatives (1947-1949) by the ROC, and the attempts of its representatives to shape the alternative projects of 'peace' and 'unity.' However, those transformations that happened to the delegated agency, legitimacy, and authority of the religious actors under Khrushchev's anti-religious politics (the late 1950s and early 1960s), forced church actors to reconsider their relationships with ecumenists and their visions of unity of "Christians of West and East." Being pushed out of the decision-making granted to them by the state, they attempted to reconfigure their position within ecumenical debates in order to reinforce their symbolic capital. Key words: Ecumenical debates, Russian orthodoxy, Soviet history, Church history, Stalinism, Church Intermediaries, World Council of Churches, Cold War, Peace projects, Soviet religious politics