The Trust - Part V: Stetskevich and the creation of "the Trust"

In early 1922, while Yakushev was very likely still in the hands of the OGPU, the Soviet secret police sent one of their operatives - Victor Stetskevich - to Reval to meet with Artomonov under the guise of being a member of the MOTsR. Stetskevich - originally a Polish intelligence official by the name of Stezkiewicz - was another in a long list of former Bolshevik enemies who had been broken by the Cheka interrogators and turned into a willing agent of their designs. According to another former Polish intelligence official, Stetskevich had betrayed the entire Polish underground in the Soviet Union when he changed sides in 1920, during the Soviet-Polish war. Following the war, he worked as a Soviet intelligence officer in Finland and Latvia under the name Kosinsky and became acquainted with the monarchist underground in the Baltic countries. After this stint, Stetskevich emerged at the headquarters of the KRO OGPU under the name Kiakovsky and - according to the same former Polish intelligence official - also participated in Yakushev's interrogation.
To Artomonov and the ever present Shchelgachev, Stetskevich - now going by the name Kolesnikov - produced the pawn shop receipt number that Yakushev had instructed Artomonov to write down as a codeword for future communications. The two White Russians had spent the last several months engaged in fruitless informal inquiries as to the whereabouts and status of Yakushev, who had apparently pledged to send some form of communication upon his return to the Soviet Union. In response to their anxious questions, Stetskevich provided them with the cover story of Yakushev's alleged typhus attack in Irkutsk. He then proceeded to propound upon the MOTsR in terms significantly at variance with that they had received in November during their fateful meeting with Yakushev.
According to Stetskevich, during Yakushev's absence the MOTsR had expanded both geographically and numerically. Contact had been made with monarchist elements in most of the major centers of European Russia. At the same time, the organization had penetrated almost every major Soviet institution - including the army and the secret police. Referring to the latter, Stetskevich now boasted that the MOTsR was able "to elude or frustrate the inevitable reprisals of the OGPU." Echoing Yakushev, the OGPU operative stressed the need for the Moscow activists to take the lead, adding the important proviso that all future monarchist efforts relating to Russia be communicated to and coordinated with the MOTsR. The conversation was continued the next day in Stetskevich's hotel room, where arrangements were made to establish secure communication links between the foreign and internal monarchist organizations through the aegis of the Estonian mission in Moscow. With this, their talks concluded, and Stetskevich headed home to report back to his superiors, while the White guardists reported back to their contacts at the Supreme Monarchist Council in Berlin on the sudden turn of events.
It now appears obvious that Stetskevich's visit to Estonia was undertaken to verify the results of Yakushev's interrogation. When the OGPU operative returned to Moscow with positive confirmation, Dzerzhinsky's lieutenants brought Yakushev in from his cell in order to present to him the structure and character of his assignment within the MOTsR. This assignment consisted of three main tasks: first, to take over liaison work between the MOTsR and foreign monarchist groups, utilizing his ability to travel abroad for the Soviet government; second, to remove 'adventurists and rogues' from among the ranks of the MOTsR and to report to the OGPU planned acts of terrorism and sabotage, and; third, to counter attempts on the part of foreign monarchists to pursue actions deemed detrimental to Soviet interests, including the lobbying of foreign governments for intervention and the pursuit of destabilization policies. Finally, it was announced that from this moment onwards, the compromised MOTsR organization would be supplied with a cover name to be utilized both abroad and within the halls of the OGPU - this name was the Trust. With this, Yakushev was finally released from prison.
As for the period of Yakushev's confinement, no one source provides an explicit accounting of its duration, but through a comparison of the various sources we can arrive at a rough approximation. All sources agree that the monarchist was arrested some time shortly after his return to Moscow - approximately late November 1921. According to a Soviet source, Yakushev had already been in prison at least two months before making his confession - which would have been in late January or early February 1922. Although this same source asserts that he was released shortly afterward - before Stetskevich's trip to Reval - we must agree with above-mentioned former Polish intelligence official that Yakushev's release came after Stetskevich had returned from an obvious mission of verification. Finally, according to a document published in one of the White Russian emigre journals and dated from September 1922, it is reported that Yakushev had been released from prison "in the second month of the [formal] existence of the MOTsR.3" Since the founding congress of the MOTsR - according to this same document - had taken place on 1 March 1922, this implies that the imprisoned bureaucrat was not released until late April or early May 1922. Thus, Yakushev spent approximately five months in the hands of the OGPU.

3. Two important points are to be derived from this document. First, the anonymous contributor of this document makes a formal distinction between the MOTsR as a loosely organized underground movement and that which arose after its formal establishment after its founding congress. Second, this document, provided by a White emigre, states that it was known by at least September 1922, that Yakushev had in fact been imprisoned. There is an obvious contradiction here between those accounts of the Trust, which report that the emigres had received information purporting that Yakushev had been struck with typhus in Irkutsk and this document, which implies that the MOTsR knew that he had been arrested and had in turn notified the emigres. But there is a possible solution to this discrepancy. In another document supplied by the same anonymous emigre contributor, it is reported that Yakushev had been arrested again in late 1922, after his second trip abroad (as described later). This document, however, does not say so explicitly. Instead, it reports that Yakushev "had been ill for three days" following his return. From the tenor of the document, it is clear that 'illness' was a covert euphemism for police confinement. Thus, it is possible that when Stetskevich reported that Yakushev had been ill with typhus, according to the OGPU cover story, the monarchists in Reval interpreted this as meaning he had been arrested. Thus, despite their best efforts to conceal Yakushev's incarceration, the OGPU may have inadvertently employed a monarchist underground code to alert the monarchists that Yakushev had been arrested.