Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser (russian: Ме́ер Абра́мович Трили́ссер; born Meier Abramovich Trilisser) (1 April 1883, in
Astrakhan
Astrakhan ( rus, Астрахань, p=ˈastrəxənʲ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in Southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the ...
– 2 February 1940), also known by the pseudonym Moskvin (russian: Москви́н), was a Soviet chief of the Foreign Department of the
Cheka and the
OGPU. Later, he worked for the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
as a covert bureau chief and
Comintern leader.
Background
Trilisser was born Meier Abramovich Trilisser on April 1, 1883 in
Astrakhan
Astrakhan ( rus, Астрахань, p=ˈastrəxənʲ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in Southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the ...
. His father was a shoemaker.
Career
Pre-revolution
In 1901, Trilisser joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Odessa and was arrested in the same year for revolutionary activities.
During the revolution of 1905, he was a revolutionary propagandist in Kazan, Petrograd and Finland. In July 1907, the police arrested him, investigated him at length and sentenced him in 1909 to eight years of hard labour. In November 1914 during this sentence, the government sent him into permanent exile in Siberia.
Revolution
After the February Revolution of 1917, Trilisser served first as editor of the Irkutsk newspaper ''Voice of the Social-Democrat'' and then in the military Irkutsk Committee of the Bolsheviks.
Intelligence
In October 1917, Trilisser worked in Siberia. As the Bolsheviks regained territory in the Far East from the Japanese, Trilisser worked underground in the Russian-Chinese border town of
Blagoveshchensk
Blagoveshchensk ( rus, Благове́щенск, p=bləgɐˈvʲeɕːɪnsk, meaning ''City of the Annunciation'') is a city and the administrative center of Amur Oblast, Russia. It is located at the confluence of the Amur and the Zeya Rivers, o ...
, north of
Harbin. After helping form a buffer state, the
Far Eastern Republic (FER) or Chita Republic (1920–1922), Trilisser was appointed commissioner of the Amur region.
Cheka
By 1921, Trilisser was working under
Felix Dzerzhinsky in the foreign intelligence department of the Soviet secret police or
Cheka. In 1922, he became head of the foreign department of the new State Political Directorate (later
OGPU).
As such, Trilisser played a significant role in the
"Trust operation, among whose achievements were penetration of counter-Soviet and
White Russian organizations and the capture and executions of
Boris Savinkov and British super spy
Sidney Reilly
Sidney George Reilly (; – 5 November 1925)—known as "Ace of Spies"—was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the pre ...
.
OGPU
In 1926, Trilisser became Vice-Chairman of the OGPU.
In October 1929, he was ousted from the foreign department of the OGPU, and was replaced by
Artur Artuzov
Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov (name at birth: Artur Eugene Leonard Fraucci) (russian: Арту́р Христиа́нович Арту́зов (), (18 February 1891 – 21 August 1937) was a leading figure in the Soviet international intelligence a ...
.
Trilisser was dismissed for attacking his boss,
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director ...
, behind his back at a Party meeting — a breach of protocol.
[, p. 43.]
Trilisser was possibly associated with
Georgy Chicherin
Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin (24 November 1872 – 7 July 1936), also spelled Tchitcherin, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and a Soviet politician who served as the first People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government from ...
. In Paris, Chicherin and Trilisser may have organized a Soviet subsidy to
Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich (; October 9, 1874 – December 13, 1947), also known as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (russian: link=no, Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих), was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophi ...
's expeditions in Central Asia.
In 1930,
Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
had him transferred to the Workers and Peasants Inspection of the RSFSR as deputy commissar.
In 1934–35, he was representative of the Soviet Control Commission in the Far East.
Comintern and NKVD
Replacing
Osip Pyatnitsky, on 10 August 1935, Trilisser was appointed a member of the
Executive Committee of the Comintern,
and became head of its Department of International Relations (OMS), which handled subsidies to foreign communist parties. Trilisser adopted the pseudonym, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Moskvin. When Stalin queried this, his deputy
Lazar Kaganovich explained that it was "because his surname is known as that of an
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
functionary".
Trilisser developed ciphers to disguise Communist activities.
His tasks as a Comintern member appear to have been those of a policeman rather than a communist agitator, including the recruitment of NKVD agents overseas and the kidnapping or assassination of various Soviet emigres, Comintern members and other 'enemies of the people'. Another of Trilisser's tasks was to recruit Soviet covert couriers to supply funds, training, and political support to various overseas communist movements deemed sympathetic to the Soviet Union.
In January 1936, he was tasked with verifying loyalty of all the Comintern staff and emigre communists in the USSR. By August, he had identified 3,000 possible 'saboteurs, spies, provocateur agents, etc." whose names were passed to the NKVD, also described as a purge of the Comintern.
United States
In the United States, Trilisser provided Soviet visas for couriers sent to supply funds to a number of American left-wing trade unions, African-American worker organizations, and communist movements, including the
CPUSA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
.
In January 1938, at the specific request and recommendation of
Earl Browder, head of the
Communist Party of the United States
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
, Trilisser gave
Max Bedacht, an American Communist Party activist and former unsuccessful New York Senate candidate,
a Soviet visa and employment as a courier supplying funds to the CPUSA and other communist front organizations. Bedacht soon began traveling between the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union as a courier, using his official cover as an international delegate for the American Communist Party.
Purge and death
Trilisser evidently came into conflict with the NKVD boss
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director ...
, which led to his dismissal in 1929, but that meant that he was trusted by Yagoda's successor
Nikolai Yezhov and survived the mass arrests of NKVD officers that followed Yagoda's dismissal. He was arrested on 23 November 1938, as
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolsheviks ...
was wresting control of the NKVD from Yezhov. His sudden disappearance shocked the head of Comintern,
Georgi Dimitrov, who tried to intervene, but was warned by Yezhov that 'Moskvin' was suspected of having been 'entrapped' into becoming a spy. He was executed on 2 February 1940.
Legacy
In 1956, Trilisser was posthumously
rehabilitated during the period of
Destalinization
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...
.
In 1967, a Soviet adventure TV series ''Operation Trust'' (''Операция "Трест"'') was created.
IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
br>Operatsiya Trest (TV 1967)
/ref>
In 1983, his character appears in the final episodes of ''Reilly, Ace of Spies
''Reilly, Ace of Spies'' is a 1983 British television programme dramatizing the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born adventurer who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Among his exploits ...
'', portrayed by an English actor Anthony Higgins.
Notes
External sources
Directing the Purges and supervising the NKVD
The trial that was not held by Boris A. Starkov
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trilisser, Mikhail
1883 births
1940 deaths
Cheka officers
People from Astrakhan
People from Astrakhan Governorate
Old Bolsheviks
Jewish socialists
Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Executive Committee of the Communist International
Cheka
NKVD officers
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner
Great Purge victims from Russia
Soviet rehabilitations
Prisoners of Shlisselburg fortress