Operation Trust

A Bolshevik counterintelligence operation run from 1921 to 1926 aimed at neutralizing opposition by creating the false impression that a powerful group of military leaders had organized to stop the communists’ takeover. Here’s an except on the “Trust” operation from pages 13-14 of Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s book, “New Lies for Old”:

From Wikipedia’s article on Operation Trust:

Operation Trust was a counterintelligence operation of the State Political Directorate (GPU) of the Soviet Union. The operation, which was set up by GPU’s predecessor Cheka, ran from 1921 to 1926, set up a fake anti-Bolshevik resistance organization, “Monarchist Union of Central Russia”, MUCR, in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. The created front company was called the Moscow Municipal Credit Association.

[…] The one Western historian who had limited access to the Trust 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.

Here’s an except on the “Trust” operation from pages 13-14 of Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s book, “New Lies for Old”: