In the summer, however, a series of events endangered the regime.
An attempt on the life of Lenin by Fanny Kaplan followed by vio-
lence in Moscow between Bolsheviks and their junior partners in the
coalition, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, caused the Cheka to act.
Lockhart was imprisoned briefly; Reilly escaped using another man’s
passport. Lockhart and Reilly were both decorated for heroism by the
British government, and the Lockhart Plot became part of the
mythology of British intelligence. The Cheka saw the Lockhart Plot
as more than a series of blunders or British schoolboy heroics. Since
1918, it has been portrayed in the histories of the Soviet security ser-
vices—both classified and unclassified—as one of the great moments
in Cheka history. For Soviet security officers it was a victory over a
major international plot that came within an inch of overthrowing the
infant Soviet government.LONG, LEO (1912–?).A student of Anthony Bluntat Cambridge,
Long was recruited to work for the Soviet service by his old tutor
during World War II. Long, who was working in the British Secu-
rity Service (MI5), was given the code name “Ralph” by the NKVD.
He apparently provided Moscow with information about British
counterintelligenceoperations against the Soviets and the Nazi in-
telligence service. Long also passed material garnered from the de-
cryption of German communications, as well as information on
British plans for the occupation of Germany. Long later confessed to
MI5 in exchange for immunity from prosecution. See alsoULTRA.LUBYANKA. For seven decades the headquarters of the Russian secu-
rity service was in the Lubyanka, an office building in central
Moscow. During the tsarist period, the Lubyanka was the headquar-
ters of the State Insurance Company, whose Russian acronym Gos-
trakhcan also be translated as an acronym for “state fear.” A Russian
joke of the 1930s was that the Lubyanka had gone from Gostrakhto
Gosuzhas:from state fear to state horror. It was also said that the
Lubyanka was the tallest building in Moscow, because from its cel-
lars one could see Siberia.
During the Stalinist period, the Lubyanka also served as a jail and
interrogation center. Executionsof important prisoners were carried148 •LONG, LEO (1912–?)06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 148