The Trust Lives! Moscow Uses Early Soviet Cheka Operations as Model

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Age: 19 hours

(Source: RIA Novosti)

Executive Summary:

  • The Trust, the Soviet secret police’s first great intelligence operation in the 1920s, is making a comeback under Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Moscow setting up Federal Security Service (FSB) groups to penetrate, hamstring, and ultimately discredit emigres opposed to his regime.
  • These groups typically falsely present themselves as independent opponents of the Kremlin, enabling Moscow to divide the emigration and advance warning on the plans of the émigrés, allowing the FSB to take action against them.
  • Moscow’s most important victory via the Trust came not while it was operating but when it was exposed as a Soviet operation, which discredited those who accepted the operation as genuine and reduced the willingness of others to help, an outcome Putin clearly hopes for.

Most people in the West recall the Trust from the dramatization of the life and death of the Odessa-born British intelligence agent Sidney Reilly in the 1983 television program, Reilly, Ace of Spies. The show portrays a 1920s Soviet counterintelligence operation, in which Soviet intelligence agents, known as Chekists, formed a fake anti-Bolshevik organization to lure out and identify genuine members of the resistance within and outside the Soviet Union (see EDM, September 15, 2022; Simpkins and Dyer, The Trust, July 1989). The Trust successfully lured Reilly back to the Soviet Union in 1925, where Soviet secret police arrested, tortured, and eventually executed him. The Trust has had an enduring legacy as a model for understanding Soviet and Russian counterintelligence tactics, as Western intelligence services and Russian diaspora organizations discovered in 1927 that the operation and its supporters in the emigration were not authentic. Now, more than ever, the Trust mirrors Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Russian political opposition in exile, which grew following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to its largest size since the 1920s (Window On Eurasia, July 2, 2020; Harbin, 2022; Idel Realii, December 9, 2024). Understanding the Trust operation helps to contextualize modern Russian intelligence tactics regarding political opposition in exile and national diaspora populations, most prominently, the Circassians.

The Trust was the code name the Soviets gave to a dissident organization they created in 1920, known as the Monarchist Union of Central Russia (MUCR). Consisting of a mix of some anti-Bolshevik Russians and many intelligence service agents, the Trust claimed it was ready to use violence to overthrow Lenin’s government. In reality, the Soviet secret police—first the Cheka from 1920 to the agency’s dissolution in 1922, and then the State Political Directorate (GPU) from 1922 to 1927 when the Kremlin terminated the operation—completely controlled the organization. This arrangement advantaged the Soviet intelligence services by splitting the Russian diaspora between those who fell for the Trust’s claim of being the true champion of a free Russia and those who argued for a more cautious approach. The operation also ensured that the Trust’s Soviet handlers always knew the opposition in exile’s plans and allowed the Trust operatives to argue that, since they were on the ground, only they, and not the émigrés, should decide when and where to subvert the Soviet government, neutralizing the influence of the Russian émigrés. When the Trust was exposed in 1927, almost certainly by the Soviets themselves, those in exile who worked with the organization were discredited in the eyes of others in the diaspora and in Western governments, giving Moscow another positive outcome (see EDM, September 15, 2022).

Upon becoming president, Putin, who began his career as a Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) officer, used Trust-style operations against Russian nationalists and dissident Russian Orthodox groups inside the Russian Federation (Window on Eurasia, October 26, 2018). More recently, he extended Trust-style tactics to selected non-Russian groups within his country (Window on Eurasia, April 29). After Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine drove thousands of Russians to flee the country, Putin expanded the “Trust” approach to the Russian opposition in exile as did his Cheka and GPU predecessors with dissidents outside of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s (Window on Eurasia, September 10, 2022; Ekho, September 14, 2024; Window on Eurasia, December 11, 2024). Few have noticed the return of Trust-style tactics under Putin because his groups, unlike the Trust, often acknowledge, sometimes openly, that they work with the Russian government, and because they operate in an inherently murky environment that allows for plausible deniability about official connections or control. Dimitry Savvin, editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian Harbin outlet, however, examined the situation closely and concluded that Putin is engaged in the same kinds of operations against the new Russian diaspora that the Cheka used against Soviet emigrants a century ago (Harbin, 2022).

Over the last several weeks, a spate of articles about the Trust on the centenary of Sidney Reilly’s 1925 execution highlights the Kremlin’s fixation on emigration and Soviet efforts to counter it (Gazeta Rassvet, September 19; Komsomolskaya Pravda, September 23; Svobodnaya Pressa;  MKRU, September 25; 73 Online, September 26). It is no surprise that Russian leaders with a Soviet bent think more about emigration than leaders of other countries, given that Lenin and the Bolsheviks went from a tiny and mostly émigré group at the start of 1917 to the rulers of Russia less than a year later. The surge of pro-regime articles about the Trust, in particular, highlights the Kremlin’s confidence in the operation’s effectiveness during its active and exposed period. These articles about the Trust feature a hallmark of Russian commentary under Putin: blaming others for Moscow’s actions or plans. In many of the articles, Russian writers of today accuse the West of using Trust-style tactics and argue that Russia must revive these Soviet tactics in response (Sputnik Abkhaziya, September 22; RIA Novosti, September 23).

This pattern strongly suggests that the Kremlin will seek to link any violence against the Putin regime to the Russian opposition in exile and any foreign governments that support them. The Kremlin will continue emphasizing ties between opposition in Russia and dissidents abroad to justify domestic repression at home and pressure other countries to provide less support to the émigrés or even cooperate with Moscow for their extradition (Idel Realii, December 9, 2024). This strategy was successful a century ago, and it is likely that Putin remembers and expects it to be effective now. The Trust is not just of historical interest, but an active tactic that remains alive. Trust-style tactics are perhaps even more dangerous now than during Soviet times, as the Putin regime has shown itself comfortable working with radical groups shunned by the Soviet system.