Trust Operation 1424641 211263627 2008-05-09T14:35:21Z Kbdankbot 6505923 Robot - move category per [[WP:CFD|CFD]] [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 May 2|2008 May 2]] Operation '''Trust''' (операция "Трест") was a [[counterintelligence]] operation of the [[State Political Directorate]] (OGPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which ran from [[1921]]-[[1926]], set up a fake anti-[[Bolshevik]] [[underground resistance|underground]] organization, ''"Monarchist Union of Central Russia"'', MUCR (Монархическое объединение Центральной России, МОЦР), in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. The head of the MUCR was Alexander Yakushev (Александр Александрович Якушев), a former [[bureaucrat]] of Ministry of Communications of [[Imperial Russia]], who after the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]] joined the [[Narkomat]] of External Trade (Наркомат внешней торговли), when the Soviets had to allow the former specialists (called "specs", "спецы") to take positions of their expertise. This position allowed him to travel abroad and contact [[White Emigre|Russian emigrants]]. MUCR kept the monarchist general [[Alexander Kutepov]] (Александр Кутепов), head of a major emigrant force, [[Russian All-Military Union]] ( Русский общевоинский союз), from active actions, who was convinced to wait for the development of the internal anti-Bolshevik forces. Among the successes of Trust was the luring of [[Boris Savinkov]] and [[Sidney Reilly]] into the [[Soviet Union]] to be arrested and executed. Some modern researchers say that there are reasons to believe that both persons had doubts in MUCR, and they went illegally into the Soviet Union for their own reasons, using MUCR as a pretext {{Fact|date=February 2007}}. The Soviets did not organize Trust from scratch. The [[White movement|White Army]] had left agents behind who were sleepers and there were also Royalist Russians who did not leave after the Civil War. These people cooperated to the point of having a loose organizational structure. When the OGPU discovered them, they did not liquidate them, but expanded the organization for their own use. Still another episode of the operation was an "illegal" trip (in fact, monitored by OGPU) of a notable emigree Vasily Shulgin into the Soviet Union. After his return he published a book ''"Three Capitals"'' with his impressions. In the book he wrote, in part, that contrary to his expectations, Russia was reviving, and the Bolsheviks would probably be removed from power. The one Western historian who had limited access to the TREST files, [[John Costello]], reported that they comprised thirty-seven volumes and were such a bewildering welter of double-agents, changed code names, and interlocking deception operations with "the complexity of a symphonic score," that Russian historians from the Intelligence Service had difficulty separating fact from fantasy. The defector [[Vasili Mitrokhin]] reported that the TREST files were not housed at the [[Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki|SVR]] offices in [[Yasenevo]], but were kept in the special archival collections (''spetsfondi'') of the [[Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti|FSB]] at the [[Lubyanka]]. In 1967 a Soviet adventure TV sequel, ''Operation Trust'' (''Операция "Трест"'') was created(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062079/) ==See also== *The [[Inner Line]] *[[Pseudo-operation]]s == Sources == *Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, Gardners Books (2000), ISBN 0-14-028487-7 *John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions : The KGB Orlov Dossier Reveals Stalin's Master Spy, Crown Publishing, 1993. ISBN 0-517-58850-1 *[[Richard B. Spence]] ''Trust no One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly'', [[Feral House]] publ., [[2003]], ISBN 0-922915-79-2 *[[Gordon Brook-Shepherd]] ''Iron Maze. The Western Secret Services and the Bolsheviks'', [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] [[1998]] [[Category:Intelligence operations]] [[Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia]] [[Category:White Russian emigration]]