In February 1940, shots were fired on the territory of the former summer residence of the head of the OGPU Yagoda, converted into a firing range. The sentence was carried out against a veteran of the revolutionary movement and a prominent Chekist Meyer Abramovich Trilisser. How was his life so tragically cut off behind the barbed wire of the secret object of the OGPU?
Failed students
Trilisser Meer Abramovich was born on April 1, 1883 in Astrakhan, into a large Jewish family of a shoemaker who moved to this city from Odessa. Despite all the efforts of his father, the family did not possess prosperity, but nevertheless Meer and his older brother David graduated from the city real school and even tried to enter Odessa University, having passed exams for the gymnasium course as an external student.
But life prepared for the brothers completely different universities. Having failed in exams, but having been delayed for some time in Odessa, they soon joined the circles of revolutionary-minded youth and joined the ranks of the Social Democratic Party. From this time on, Meer Abramovich Trilisser embarked on the path of a professional revolutionary. Together with his brother, he carries out various party instructions both in Odessa itself and in many other cities, including St. Petersburg. With the beginning of the First Russian Revolution, he manifests himself as the organizer of military units.
In hard labor and in exile
When in July 1906 there was an uprising of soldiers and sailors in the Sveaborg fortress near Finland, Meer took an active part in it, for which he was arrested, and later, by the decision of a military court, he was sent to serve hard labor in Shlisselburg fortress for five years. After this time, he is exiled under public surveillance by the police to one of the remote villages of the Irkutsk province.
Start of work in the Cheka
After the fall of the autocracy in February 1917, Trilisser received freedom along with many exiles. Meer Abramovich moved to Irkutsk and within a few months he edited the Social Democratic newspaper published there, and after the October coup he became a member of the Military Revolutionary Council of Siberia and transferred to work in the Cheka. Having become one of the leaders of this organization, he waged a merciless struggle with everyone who was not ready to unconditionally accept the dictatorship of the new government.
In 1921, Trilisser Mikhail Abramovich (as his name often appears in documents from then on) was sent to conduct illegal work in the territories occupied at that time by the Japanese and White Guards. In the context of the strictest conspiracy, he creates an extensive intelligence network, thanks to which information on the enemy’s actions was regularly received in Moscow, and after the defeat of the Japanese and the creation of the republic in the Far East, he becomes the commissar of the Amur Region and is a member of the committee of the republican state political protection committee.
Foreign intelligence work
In the same year, an event occurred from which his entire biography received a completely new direction - Meer Abramovich Trilisser received Dzerzhinsky’s order to transfer to the foreign branch of the Cheka and establish an external intelligence system. Its main task in those years was the identification of emigrant anti-Soviet organizations based abroad, the clarification of their plans, and all kinds of opposition to them, including the physical elimination of leaders.
In this direction, Trilisser launched a large-scale work. He managed to introduce his residents in almost all embassies, consulates and foreign trade missions. Recruitment of agents abroad was also carried out. To this end, he personally travels abroad and visits many European countries. As a result, information about all the intentions and active actions of the enemy came to the operational center, where Trilisser personally received it.
Meer Abramovich was so well informed that even when Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly prepared the famous assassination attempt on Soviet diplomats during a conference in Genoa, they not only controlled their every move, but even knew where and at what price they purchased weapons. Such highly professional work helped put an end to the activities of many organizations hostile to our country.
Economic intelligence and misinformation of the enemy
In 1923, Trilisser was instructed to create a special service within the foreign branch of the Cheka, whose task was to carry out actions aimed at misinforming the enemy. This new unit was supposed to systematically mislead foreign intelligence services regarding the state of affairs in the country's Armed Forces, its defense industry and foreign policy apparatus. Of their operations, these days, such as the Trust and the Syndicate are well known.
In 1925, Trilisser creates a unit in his subordinate department to collect information related to the economies of foreign countries and their scientific and technological developments. Within a year, a division was formed, thanks to which engineers of the Soviet design bureaus received copies of technical documentation in the field of radio engineering, defense industry, mechanical engineering and chemistry.
The peak of a career and the beginning of sunset
Trilisser's biographers agree that the peak of his career falls on the period 1926-1928. At this time, while occupying the post of deputy head of the OGPU, he is also authorized under the Council of People's Commissars. Such responsible appointments were the result of a high assessment of his work given by F. Dzerzhinsky. At the same time, Meer Abramovich does not stop his work in the Foreign Intelligence Department.
In the subsequent period, his activity began to decline. This is largely due to the difficulties artificially created for him during the campaign in the country to combat the Trotskyists. In addition, as Agabekov, an OGPU agent who fled to the West, testified in his memoirs, his career growth was stopped as a result of intrigues by the future head of the OGPU Yagoda, whose main competitor was Trilisser.
Meer Abramovich, nevertheless, continues to work as a member of the Central Control Commission of the CPSU (B.), Combining several more posts with this. In 1930, a series of failures followed among foreign agents controlled by Trilisser. Whether it was his fault or the failure was the result of unforeseen circumstances is not known, but his credibility was undermined. The head of the foreign department was not accused of treason, but his conformity to his position was called into question.
Another wave of terror
Nevertheless, until 1938 he remained in the apparatus of the Council of People's Commissars and carried out numerous instructions related both to questions of foreign intelligence and to monitoring the activities of a large number of Soviet party and economic organizations. In particular, it ensured the work of structures involved in the transfer of members of foreign communist parties to the VKP (b).
Meer Abramovich Trilisser, whose biography, the history of life and the death of which is typical for a party functionary of those years, was the victim of a system that he devoted many years to creating. His arrest coincided with the start of another wave of repression, called the "big purge." The victims of this campaign were thousands of Communists, who infinitely believed in Stalin. Among them were many veterans who went through royal prisons and hard labor.
Sentence of execution
In November 1938, an investigation was launched into the case of a spy and terrorist organization, allegedly created among employees and heads of the foreign department of the OGPU and the Comintern. Among others, Trilisser was arrested. He was charged with communication with the same former Commissar of Internal Affairs G. Yagoda, who had once seen his rival in him, and by that time had already been shot as an enemy of the people. In addition, the case file indicated that Mikhail Trilisser (real name Meer Abramovich), taking advantage of his official position as an employee of the Comintern, deliberately planted Trotskyists, spies and provocateurs into the ranks of the fraternal communist parties.
The Supreme Court found the guilt fully proven and sentenced him, as well as a number of persons who were involved in this case, to death. All the condemned were shot on February 2, 1940 at the Kommunarka firing range specially designed for this purpose . Only after many years, when the main culprit of those bloody repressions - Stalin, did not become, the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, having reviewed the case, issued a resolution on rehabilitation.
Grave at the monastery cemetery
A veteran of the revolutionary movement and a prominent Chekist were buried in St. Petersburg, in one of the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, called the "Communist Site". The following is carved on a gray granite obelisk: “Trilisser David Abramovich, 1884-1934”. Currently, his name is on the streets in Astrakhan and Irkutsk.
Those who would like to learn more about the life of this outstanding person may not have enough of the information provided by his brief biography. Meer Trilisser became the hero of many documentary works telling about his fate. The most interesting and informative of them is a book written by his widow Olga Naumovna Johanson. It is called "The Road of Fight: An Essay on the Life and Work of M. A. Trilisser."