Maki Mirage

[9] Operation Maki Mirage can be placed in the context of the Soviet Union utilizing their diaspora nationalities (i.e. non-Eastern Slav peoples or narody such as Greeks, Finns, Germans, Poles, Chinese, Turks, Koreans, Iranians and many others), otherwise treated as "last among socialist equals" and subject to forced deportations.

It was for the most part an aggressive forward operation in intelligence (undertaking assassination, recruitment, reconnaissance, destruction of socio-political personages, targets and other measures) to disrupt and instill fear that the existing regimes in China and the Japanese empire could not rule and protect their citizens.

The Chinese-Lenin School of Vladivostok was established for the official purpose of educating students and turning them into socialist comrades and acolytes to spread socialism throughout East Asia.

This officer's name was Alec (who in reality was Willie Fisher, a Soviet INO agent also with Volksdeutsche papers who in real life was fluent in German).

The Pole spent lavishly on his girlfriend taking trips to Warsaw with fine dining, cabarets and other assorted nightlife that were part of courtship and "good living.

Robert Tucker wrote, "The contents of these letters suggest that only the most 'harmless' documents, those that in no way touched upon Stalin's and Molotov's darkest and most criminal activities, were selected for the archive.

Most Soviet GRU and OGPU/NKVD agents (the "Russians") spoke a smattering of Chinese and (less common) Japanese which was often difficult to understand despite the fact that they may have finished courses in the language in Russia at "Oriental Institutes."

Trust required more time to charm and then persuade the ex-Whites, Monarchists and other anti-Soviet and ex-Tsarist military and government officials who were all living abroad that a real, verifiable fifth column movement existed in the USSR.

The larger question remains, "How were the Soviets able to undertake their 'special tasks' of assassinations, bombings, spying, and other acts of diversion, wrecking and political intrigue when almost all of the 'bases' were covered?"

If the "Russians" couldn't (figuratively speaking) "pull the trigger" without Soviet intelligence being countered or facing a grave threat, it was then that the East Asians were sent to finish the job.

1899 Vladivostok) was a Soviet Korean raised and educated in Japan, who from 1922 was a secret agent of the GPU (State Political Directorate) codenamed "Marten",[61] possibly being recruited as early as 1921 by the Cheka.

[61] According to historian Hiroaki Kuromiya, it is possible that a blackmail plot on Michitaro Komatsubara masterminded by Roman Kim may have assisted the Soviet victory at Khalkin-gol in Mongolia in 1939.

[69] Chang in his 2019 conference paper "EASI: New Paradigms and Methods" noted that both the Soviets and the Russian Federation were writing accounts of Operation Maki Mirage which completely ignore and omit the contributions of the 1200 East Asian agents who participated in it.

These accounts (through over ten newspaper articles, several documentaries and academic books on Maki Mirage-- all published since the year 2000 in Russia) are chauvinistic (i.e. racist) and marginalize the contributions of the USSR's ethnic minorities.

[75] Tepliakov's monograph Stalin's Guardsmen (Oprichniki Stalina) gives a short biography (education and work history) regarding three of these officers as well as five other Chinese NKVD or GRU agents (including Lenintsev).

Ivan Gavrilovich Tulumbaev (born Li Fong Jiang in 1912) appears to have arrived in Russia at a very young age and to have begun working in the GRU while in his teens.

[3][82] According to A.M. Nair, an Indian instructor at the Japanese intelligence school in Xinjing (Changchun), Manchuria, they trained some thirty Koreans who crossed over into the Russian Far East.

Communist budgets for intelligence did not take into account the proper "market value" for time, human resources, salaries, rent, and the use of buildings, land, houses, apartments, etc.

In Trust (Trest), we see agent-officers acting out different roles such as those belonging to "fake" Monarchist groups along with forged documents authenticating relationships to known anti Soviet elements.

[99] In his memoirs, Soviet spy Pavel Sudoplatov stated that in 1942, the INO, NKVD had a force of twenty-thousand including administrative staff using Americans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Poles, Romanians, Czechs, Spaniards and many other nationalities (such as the ones listed by Trepper).

These agents were also used overseas most probably in Europe, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean including Turkey (Soviet Poles, Germans, Greeks, Finns and Turks--whether Oghuz or Chagatai speakers.

Despite the nationalities deportations, these operations, planned and led by the INO, NKVD (4th directorate, foreign department of the secret police) and the GRU employed all or almost all of the Soviet diaspora peoples.

[109] This chapter by necessity would utilize files from Russia's off-limits archives (requiring permission by the FSB for select researchers, intelligence agents and the like) since the CLS was a school for espionage operatives (as well as a university).

Additionally with diplomatic help, the Russian Federation temporarily opened the previously "off-limits" NKVD/KGB/FSB archival documents,[113][114] which allowed the authors to pen one chapter on the Chinese-Lenin School of Vladivostok and its activities specifically that of training and providing agents for Operation Maki Mirage.

[115] One should note that this chapter and its materials (written by Ancha and Miz, but requested by Li Hui and the PRC) contain no footnotes or citations unlike the others in The Chinese Diaspora in Vladivostok.

One major reason was the growing market influence of the Japanese Empire and the Bolsheviks reliance on Japan for hard currency in exchange for resources such as timber, natural gas, minerals and petroleum from the Russian Far East, and especially Sakhalin.

[17] On October 29, 1923, the Primorskii provincial Communist Party voted to begin investment in large scale infrastructure construction (schools, universities, radio stations, publishing houses and roads) in the Russian Far East to support their political, educational and occupational campaigns for the Chinese and Koreans there.

This was called korenizatsiia (indigenization), a sort of "Sovietization" program which would assimilate and integrate national minorities into the institutions of the socialist state through ideological campaigns at work, school and through radio and newspapers.

The CLS served to train qualified intelligence officers to work behind the "cordon" (behind Soviet borders) on the territory of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

Additionally, some of the cadets at the Soviet espionage universities were not all students themselves but were veterans of the RO, OKDVA (Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army) and INO (Foreign intelligence).