Operation Trust

Operation Trust (Russian: операция "Трест", romanized: operatsiya "Trest") was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by Cheka, the GPU's predecessor, ran from 1921 to 1927, set up a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization, the Monarchist Union of Central Russia (MUCR) (Монархическое объединение Центральной России, МОЦР), in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. The created front company was called the Moscow Municipal Credit Association. The head of the MUCR was Alexander Yakushev, a former bureaucrat of the Ministry of Communications of Imperial Russia, who after the Russian Revolution joined the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, when the Soviets began to allow the former specialists (called "spetsy", Russian: спецы) to resume the positions of their expertise. This position allowed him to travel abroad and contact Russian emigrants. Yakushev was arrested for his contacts with the exiled White movement. In the same year of his arrest, he was recruited by the Soviet secret police by Artur Artuzov. MUCR kept the monarchist general Alexander Kutepov from active actions, as he was convinced to wait for the development of internal anti-Bolshevik forces. Kutepov had previously believed in militant action as a solution to the Soviet occupation, and had formed the "combat organization", a militant splinter from the Russian All-Military Union (Russian: Русский Обще-Воинский Союз, Russkiy Obshche-Voinskiy Soyuz) led by General Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel. Kutepov also created the Inner Line as a counter-intelligence organization to prevent Bolshevik penetrations. It caused the Cheka some problems but was not overly successful. Among the successes of Trust was the luring of Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly into the Soviet Union, where they were captured. The Soviets did not organize Trust from scratch. The White Army had left sleeper agents, and there were...