Who Do You Trust?

The top picture is of Boris Savinkov.
The bottom is of Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Boris was responsible for a lot of trouble in Bolshevik Russia. As a White Russian guerilla he was very effective in coming to the attention of the Bolshevik leadership as a dangerous individual.

Felix Dzerzhinsky created the Cheka, forerunner of the KGB.
In the mid twenties, the USSR was in great danger from the White Russian emigre organisations all over the world, so Dzerzhinsky set up the 'Trust', a fake centre of resistance to Bolshevism, which was designed to draw out the sting of world sympathies and make it appear that something less than total domination existed under the Bolsheviks.

Leading opponents of the regime were drawn in, and in a clever inversion of 'show trials' which punished fake enemies severely, these punished real enemies leniently.

The motive was two-fold; first, to destroy organised opposition by bringing it under Bolshevik control.
The second, to make good public relations with the rest of the world.

The methods?
The methods were subtle.
White leaders were surrounded with clever, plausible operatives who possessed deep loyalty to Bolshevism without ever showing it, and by every psychological means they harnessed the emigres back into the fold, by appealing, for instance, to notions of 'Mother Russia'.

Recalcitrants who were unrepentant were dealt with by the usual methods, such as those used against Trostky in Mexico.

Boris, however, was persuaded. He was sentenced to ten years in prison after returning to Russia in peace.

Some say that the Trust was brought down by Polish Intelligence.
Others say that it was the example of Sidney Reilly, who offered the Bolsheviks too great a temptation, which exposed it.

The fact is, Dzerzhinsky cleared the way of internal opposition and this led to Stalin's endless holocaust. Even after it ended, the Trust led to such public relations triumph that it was not until 1980 that a critical mass in the West recognised Bolshevism's true nature, Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech notwithstanding; after all, when Stalin died he was ablatively rejected to prolong the tyranical reality for another generation.

Much of this was brilliantly portrayed in 'Reilly Ace Of Spies', the 80's TV series.

Savinkov always reminded me of Chris Tame.
But of course, the Libertarian Alliance is not an emigre organisation.