Maki Mirage

Operation Maki Mirage or Maki-Mirage (Russian: Маки-Мираж, romanized: Maki-Mirazh)[1][2][3] was a Soviet intelligence operation that involved 1200 plus Soviet intelligence agent-officers, that is, spies of East Asian descent being sent to China, Korea, Manchukuo (existing and under Japanese rule to 1945) and Mongolia (through Kiakhta) to perform intelligence gathering, "special tasks," and disinformation.[4][5] The operation occurred primarily during the Interwar period, starting in the 1920s and continued into World War II. According to Soviet literature, the NKVD placed moles inside Japanese anti-Soviet operations (agentura). The Soviet moles supposedly uncovered an active network of 200 Japanese agents in the Soviet Far East during the 1930s.[6][7] This network was never verified by reliable sources including Japanese (i.e. the 200 on Soviet territory were never proven to exist). A notable aspect of the operation was the employ of East Asian agents from an estimated 1200 plus Soviet Koreans and Soviet Chinese who were sent to spy on the Japanese Empire primarily in Manchuria/Manchukuo, China proper, Korea (then part of the Japanese empire) and Mongolia (the latter was where the Transbaikal INO agents were sometimes deployed). This number has been adjusted from Chang's initial estimate of "over 600" to 1200 plus with the finding that Soviet intelligence (GRU and INO, NKVD) recruited from not only the Chinese Lenin School (initially the only school known, abbreviated as CLS), but also the KUTV and the KUTK universities in Moscow. This recruitment from three universities is confirmed (by Ancha, Tepliakov, the Wilson Center document and the two articles in Russian about the life of Lenintsev), but without the exact numbers.[8] Leopold Trepper, a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) agent, confirmed that the KUTV and the KUTK were utilized to recruit East Asians into Soviet intelligence in his biography, The Great Game: The Story of the Red Orchestra.[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.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] However, in Russian historiography and documentary portrayals, the participation of over one thousand East Asian agents (who were Soviet citizens and foreigners, the latter were Chinese students studying in the USSR) was almost completely omitted and even when confirmed, this evidence was disregarded (see the picture of the eight NKVD officers, three of whom were Chinese).[4][18]

  1. ^ EHESS 2011, p. 661: "Japan ( 'Shogun', 'Dreamers', 'Maki - Mirage', 'Organizator' and so on ). Japan was often misled by false intelligence supplied by "anti - Soviet" organisations which it believed were run by Japan but in fact were run by the Soviet secret police.".
  2. ^ Fuchs 2004.
  3. ^ Kuromiya 2007, p. 256.
  4. ^ a b Chang 2019a.
  5. ^ Rochford 2020, pp. 47–49.
  6. ^ Nikolaev 2000, pp. 226–227.
  7. ^ Staff Writer 2014.
  8. ^ Chang 2024a, p. 34.
  9. ^ Trepper 1977, p. 38.
  10. ^ Pohl 2022.
  11. ^ Voutira 2011.
  12. ^ Taagepera 2013.
  13. ^ Sommer 2011.
  14. ^ Musial 2013.
  15. ^ Snow 2023, p. 295.
  16. ^ Eiermann 2007.
  17. ^ Chang 2016.
  18. ^ Chang 2019b.