Operation Trust: The Soviet Counterintelligence Masterstroke of the 1920s

In the tumultuous aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War, the nascent Soviet regime faced significant internal and external opposition. To consolidate power and neutralize threats from both homegrown and exiled adversaries, the Soviet secret police, known as the Cheka and later the OGPU, devised a cunning stratagem known as Operation Trust. This counterintelligence operation, executed during the early 1920s, aimed to mislead anti-Bolshevik factions by creating a fictitious anti-communist resistance organization.