Operation Trust

A fictitious underground

According to a thesis by S. A. Harris at the Naval Postgraduate School, on 1 December 1920 Lenin instructed Dzerzhinsky to neutralise the threat from the émigrés. In 1922 the Cheka was replaced by the GPU; the operation was run by the head of counterintelligence, Artur Artuzov.^4,5

Moscow presented the Monarchist Organisation of Central Russia (MOCR) to the émigrés and to foreign services as a domestic resistance movement. Its front was the “Moscow Municipal Credit Association”, and the word “Trust” referred in correspondence to the organisation itself.⁵

According to the description of the collection at the Hoover Institution archives, the Soviet political police controlled the organisation in order to penetrate and manipulate anti-communist Russian groups in exile.²

Alexander Yakushev

The face of the Trust was Alexander Yakushev, a high official of the Tsarist civil service. According to Harris, in late summer 1921 in Reval (Tallinn) he spoke about the organisation's existence; on returning to Russia he was arrested and coerced into working for the Cheka.^1,4

Among the émigrés he presented himself as the MOCR's “foreign minister”. He made his first mission abroad as an agent in late 1922.⁵

Deceived intelligence services

According to a review in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence, the Polish, French and British services received OGPU-fabricated disinformation through émigré channels. J. M. Roth writes that by 1923 the Trust was developing relationships with the Polish, British, Estonian and Finnish services.^1,5

According to Marek Świerczek's book, as summarised by Michał Kozłowski, the operation began by drawing in Estonian intelligence: Captain Roman Birk was turned in 1922. Polish officers then began working with the fictitious organisation, and Polish diplomats gave the Soviets access to their diplomatic mail.⁶

Przemysław Olstowski, writing in Europa Orientalis, argues that Poland's Second Department became a “resonator” for messages from the Kremlin and the Lubyanka to the intelligence services of France, Britain and Japan, among others.³

Savinkov and Reilly

In a related operation (“Syndicate-2”), Boris Savinkov was persuaded to return to Russia illegally. He was arrested after crossing the border in August 1924 and died in May 1925 in the Lubyanka prison, in circumstances that Harris and Roth regard as unclear.^1,4,5

The British agent Sidney Reilly, under a Soviet death sentence since 1918, crossed the border in late September 1925, after meeting Yakushev and Maria Shults in Vyborg, through a GPU-controlled “window”, and was never seen in the West again.^1,4,5

According to the CIA review, it was the liquidation of Savinkov and Reilly that first cast doubt on the Trust.¹

The end: Opperput's flight

In April 1927 one of the OGPU's principal agents, Edward Opperput (Edward Staunits), fled to Finland with Maria Shults and publicly revealed that the organisation was under Soviet control. He was interrogated by the Finns and by intelligence officers from other countries. According to the CIA review, after his flight “the Trust lay in shambles”.^1,5

In Kozłowski's summary: the fugitive had been known in the MOCR as Kasatkin and only in Finland announced that his real name was Opperput and that he was an agent of the Bolshevik services. In July 1927 a Polish commission chaired by Lieutenant Colonel Ludwik Bociański covered the matter up instead of clarifying it.⁶

According to the abstract of Konrad Paduszek's doctoral thesis, after the provocation was exposed Polish intelligence rebuilt its network in the USSR and limited its use of secret sources. As a result it lost much of its insight into Soviet policy, which contributed to its failure to anticipate the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.⁷

The Soviet version and memory

The Soviet version was fixed by a novel by Lev Nikulin (cited in the CIA review under the English title The Swell of the Sea); its author was given access to the OGPU files. Blackstock considered it a better source than many Soviet works; the CIA reviewer faulted him for relying on Nikulin and so obscuring the provocative character of the operation.¹

In 1969 the CIA produced a 78-page study, The Trust; a copy is held at the Hoover Institution.²

The CIA reviewer called the Trust “one of the OGPU's most successful foreign ventures”. The historian Richard Spence, cited by Roth, argues on the other hand that the legend of the operation proved more durable than its actual achievements.^1,5