Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

the early 1920s of a fictitious opposition group within the Soviet

Union. The Cheka-created Monarchist Organization of Central Rus-

sia created in turn a trust in Paris called the Municipal Credit Orga-

nization of Moscow. The Trust was crafted to establish ties with Rus-

sian émigrégroups in the West and lure the leaders of the White

movements back into the Soviet Union. Émigrés and some Western

intelligence services fell for the ruse. In August 1924 Boris

Savinkov, a former revolutionary and minister of war in the transi-

tional Aleksandr Kerensky government, entered the Soviet Union

clandestinely to contact the Trust. He was arrested and publicly con-

fessed his sins in a Soviet court. Shortly thereafter, in September

1925, Sidney Reilly, sometimes agent of British intelligence, crossed

the Finnish–Soviet frontier to contact the Trust. He was captured, in-

terrogated, and then executed in Moscow.

Following the success in capturing Savinkov and Reilly, the Trust

disappeared as stealthily as it emerged. It has been studied in the West

as well as the Soviet Union as the model of a successful counterin-

telligence operation. The Soviet and Eastern European intelligence

services often engaged in false flagorganizations such as the Trust to

distract émigrés and foreign intelligence services.

TSANAVA, LEVRENTY FOMICH (1900–1955).One of Lavrenty

Beria’s protégés in the Soviet security service, Tsanava joined the

Chekabefore his 21st birthday and rose quickly in the Georgian

NKVD. In 1933 he transferred to the Communist Partyapparatus to

work with Beria. In 1938 he followed Beria back into the security

service and was appointed chief of the Byelorussian NKVD. During

World War II, Tsanava worked with the partisan movement in

Byelorussia and in Moscow, as deputy chief of the central partisan

staff, and in 1945 was made a lieutenant general. After the war,

Tsanava was made head of the MGBin Byelorussia. He master-

minded the murder of the actor Solomon Mikhoels in Minsk at

Joseph Stalin’s behest in 1948. In 1952 he was removed from his

senior position and placed on leave. In April 1953 he was arrested for

Mikhoels’s murder, and died in pretrial confinement in 1955, possi-

bly a suicide.

TSINEV, GEORGI (1907–?).Tsinev attended the same metallurgical

institute in the Ukraine as Leonid Brezhnev, who became a colleague

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