Felix Dzerzhinsky of the Soviet Cheka (Secret Police)

When the Royal family of Russia fell in 1917 Lenin was able to seize power from Alexander Kerensky who had brought about the Tsar's abdication. The power struggle was beginning in earnest and many men of the Russian Duma went over to the White army to fight against Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionaries. The war with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had ended. By November of 1918 the Great War was over and the newly formed Soviet Union would have a host of imperial nations looking at ways of stopping the Bolshevik revolution in its tracks.

There were many Russians in exile that were only too willing to try and over throw the Soviet Union in favor of the White Russian regime. Inside Russia there was an organisation called the Trust - an anti Bolshevik organisation with the aim of toppling the Soviet Union. 

Lenin had a new Secret Police force led by a man born of a Polish noble family. His name was Felix Dzerzhinsky and he was a formidable, ruthless and skilled man when it came to hunting down dissidents in the Soviet Union. He had brought the Communist regime through a number of encounters including an attempt on Lenin's life in which he exposed the Lockhart plot.

The Lockhart plot was a counter revolutionary attempt to be rid of Lenin and replace the Soviet with more amiable Russians. This was headed by A British Scot called Bruce Lockhart. However, before the careful plans could be executed another independent free lance anti Bolshevik organisation enrolled a young woman to try and shoot Lenin after a political rally. This was done outside of the Lockhart plot and jumped the gun for the more organised anti Soviet plotters.

Dzerzhinsky and his Cheka quickly rounded up all suspected anti dissidents including the British diplomat Bruce Lockhart. Britain had to exchange a Soviet agent to get him back. Some of these anti Bolsheviks members belonged to the anti Bolshevik Trust and people within the Cheka decided to take over it and continue operating it as a fake anti - Bolshevik underground organisation. They had control of it from 1921 until 1926.

Wealthy Russians and foreign industrialists outside of the Soviet Union payed vast amounts of money into the Trust believing it was being used to over throw the Soviet regime. In fact they were propping it up with hard currency. Dzerzhinsky was also able to use his Cheka (Secret Police) within the fake Trust to learn of dissidents abroad and was able to target such people by posing as members within the (Fake anti Bolshevik) Trust.

In 1924 Lenin died after having a number of strokes. He had survived the assassination attempt but it had been too much for the revolutionary. Starlin came to power and when he learnt of the Trust in 1925, he was dismayed that he had been ignorant of a fake anti Soviet organisation being used without his knowledge. He forced Dzerzhinsky to use it to execute some high profile anti Bolsheviks - some believe Boris Savinkov and British agent Sidney Reilly were among them. The outside world was then able to target Soviet agents abroad, knowing that many of the Trusts organisers were fake communist agents.

In 1926 Dzerzhinsky died of heart failure after a political speech. He was just 49 years of age and had laid the foundations for espionage organisations like the Cheka, NKVD and eventually what would become, the KGB. He was celebrated in military parades in Red square long after his death and was regarded as a hero of the Soviet Union.