Richard Deacon, the author of A History of the Russian Secret Service (1972) pointed out: "Boris Savinkov... was given to understand that all the plotters inside Russia were waiting for was an assurance of massive support from the anti-Bolsheviks outside Russia. Soon Savinkov's own agents were being smuggled in and out of Russia." Savinkov asked Sidney Reilly to carry out investigations into "The Trust". Reilly contacted Ernest Boyce, the head of the Russian section of MI6. Boyce confirmed that the organization was apparently a movement of considerable power within Russia. Its agents had supplied valuable intelligence to the Secret Services of a number of anti-Bolshevik countries and was convinced that it was not under the control of Cheka. (4)

The Foreign Office was unimpressed with Boris Savinkov describing him as "most unreliable and crooked". Winston Churchill replied that he thought that he "was a great man and a great Russian patriot, in spite of the terrible methods with which he has been associated". Churchill rejected the advice of his advisors on the grounds that "it is very difficult to judge the politics in any other country". With the agreement with Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the head of MI6, it was decided to send Savinkov back into Russia.

On 10th August 1924, Savinkov left for Russia. Nineteen days later Izvestia announced that Savinkov had been arrested. Over the next few months the newspaper announced that he had been condemned to death; sentence had been commuted to ten years' imprisonment and finally released. It was reported that he was living in a comfortable house in Loubianka Square. Savinkov wrote to Sidney Reilly, that he had changed his views of the Bolsheviks: "How many illusions and fairy tales have I buried here in the Loubianka! I have met men in the GPU whom I have known and trusted from my youth up and who are nearer to me than the chatter-boxes of the foreign delegation of the Social-Revolutionaries... I cannot deny that Russia is reborn." Reilly reported this in a letter that appeared in the The Morning Post on 8th September, 1924. (5) It is believed that Savinkov was killed soon after the letter was written and was part of the plot conceived by Artur Artuzov to capture Reilly.

Artur Artuzov was also given the task of investigating what became known as the Zinoviev Letter. In September 1924 MI5 intercepted a letter signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, and Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Hugh Sinclair, head of MI6, provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect. Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson the head of Special Branch, were also convinced that the letter was genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but someone leaked news of the letter to The Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party.

Artuzov's report was sent to Genrikh Yagoda on 11th November 1924. "According to certain information, which requires checking, the Zinoviev letter was allegedly fabricated in Riga by Lieutenant Pokrovisky, who has in his possession Comintern stationary and made it up from extracts of Zinoviev's speeches with something extra added... Pokrovsky, who is in contact with the British counter-intelligence service, told them that he had information that an important letter would be sent that day by post from Riga to an agreed address belonging to the British Communist Party, which was allegedly given to him. He then posted the letter which was duly intercepted by the British." (6) A further report on 20th November 1924 stated that it was sent "to a well-known English communist, MacManus... the British police who keeps taps on the latter's correspondence, photographed the letter and handled it over to the British Foreign Office as genuine". Nigel West, the author of The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets Exposed by the KGB Archives (1999) claims that Ivan D. Pokrovsky was the man who arranged for the Zinoviev Letter to be obtained by MI5. (7) It later became clear that Major George Joseph Ball (1885-1961), a MI5 officer, played an important role in leaking it to the press.

After a number of delays caused mainly by Reilly's debt-ridden business dealings, he met Ernest Boyce in Paris before crossing the Finnish border on 25th September 1925. At a house outside Moscow two days later Reilly had a meeting with the leaders of Monarchist Union of Central Russia, where he was arrested by the secret police. Reilly was told he would be executed because of his attempts to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918.

According to the Soviet account of his interrogation, on 13th October 1925, Reilly wrote to Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of Cheka, saying he was ready to cooperate and give full information on the British and American Intelligence Services. Sidney Reilly's appeal failed and he was executed on 5th November 1925. For his role in the "liquidation" of Savinkov and Reilly, Artur Artuzov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. (8)

In August 1931, Artur Artuzov was appointed the head of Government Political Administration (GPU) foreign intelligence (commonly known as INO), where he managed to amass political, military and technical intelligence data from major Western nations. In May 1934 he became deputy head of the IV Directorate of the Staff of the GPU). He held this position until early 1937. (9)

In 1937 Joseph Stalin became concerned that Soviet agents working abroad may be supporters of Leon Trotsky and his theory of World Revolution. Nikolai Yezhov established a new section of the NKVD named the Administration of Special Tasks (AST). It contained about 300 of his own trusted men from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Yezhov's intention was complete control of the NKVD by using men who could be expected to carry out sensitive assignments without any reservations. The new AST operatives would have no allegiance to any members of the old NKVD and would therefore have no reason not to carry out an assignment against any of one of them. The AST was used to remove all those who had knowledge of the conspiracy to destroy Stalin's rivals. One of the first to be arrested was Genrikh Yagoda, the former head of the NKVD.

Within the administration of the ADT, a clandestine unit called the Mobile Group had been created to deal with those considered to be supporters of Trotsky. The head of the Mobile Group was Mikhail Shpiegelglass. By the summer of 1937, over forty intelligence agents serving abroad were summoned back to the Soviet Union. This included Arnold Deutsch, Theodore Maly, Ignaz Reiss, Alexander Orlov Yan Berzin, Artur Artuzov, Elsa Poretsky, Dmitri Bystrolyotov, Boris Vinogradov, Peter Gutzeit, Boris Bazarov, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko and Walter Krivitsky. Maly, Berzin, Artuzov, Vinogradov, Gutzeit, Bazarov and Antonov-Ovseenko were all executed. Reiss refused to return and was murdered in Switzerland.

Artur Artuzov was also arrested and was executed on 21st August, 1937.

(1) Svetlana Chervonnaya, Artur Artuzov (2008)

(2) The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)

(3) Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive (1999) page 45

(4) Richard Deacon, A History of the Russian Secret Service (1972) pages 257-258

(5) Sidney Reilly, The Morning Post (8th September, 1924)

(6) Artur Artuzov, report sent to Genrikh Yagoda (11th November 1924)

(7) Nigel West, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets Exposed by the KGB Archives (1999) page 41

(8) The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)

(9) Svetlana Chervonnaya, Artur Artuzov (2008)