33. Battling the Bolsheviks
In April 1918, Britain’s MI6 sent Sidney Reilly to Russia, whose new Bolshevik government had signed a peace treaty that took the country out of the Entente and out of the war against Germany. The British hoped to overthrow the Bolsheviks, and replace them with a new government that might rejoin the war on Britain’s side.
To that end, Reilly got involved in a variety of plots intended to destabilize the Reds. That spring and summer, Reilly tried his hand at a variety of schemes, including an abortive plot to bribe Kremlin guards into launching coup, and a plan to assassinate Vladimir Lenin that wounded but failed to kill the Bolshevik leader. Reilly was forced to flee, escaping the country just a step ahead of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka. The Soviets tried him in absentia, and sentenced him to death.