Maki Mirage

Operation Maki Mirage or Maki-Mirage (Russian: Маки-Мираж, romanized: Maki-Mirazh) 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. 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. This network was never verified by reliable sources including Japanese (i.e. the 200 on Soviet territory were never proven to exist). Soviet intelligence (GRU and NKVD/INO) recruited over 1,200 East Asian agents—mostly Soviet Koreans and Soviet Chinese—for espionage against Japan in Manchuria/Manchukuo, China, Korea, and Mongolia. This figure corrects Jon Chang's first estimate of "over 600," after evidence showed recruitment came not only from the Chinese Lenin School (CLS), but also from Moscow's KUTV and KUTK universities (confirmed by Ancha, Tepliakov, Wilson Center documents, and Russian biographical articles on Lenintsev alumni). Two hundred of the twelve hundred plus EASI (EASI refers to East Asians in Soviet Intelligence) were recruited from the Red Army, the Red Guards and the general population in the USSR from 1920 to 1945. Of the three universities, it is estimated that CLS produced 400 EASI, while the KUTK and the KUTV each produced approximately 300 EASI from 1920 to 1945. 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. 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. 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).