During his lifetime, Agagianian was considered the Catholic Church's leading expert on communism and the Soviet Union. Norman St John-Stevas wrote 1955 that Agagianian is "uncommitted" in the Cold War. In a January 1958 diplomatic report Marcus Cheke, UK Ambassador to the Holy See, wrote that Agagianian "believes that the best thing for the Western powers to do is to hang on, avoid war (and the more strongly armed and united they are, the less danger there is of Russia venturing on a war) and to wait for a transformation inside Russia, which he thinks will happen sooner or later." Agagianian called for a "heroically Christian" struggle against communism during his visit to Australia in 1959.
