1919–1929

In 1918 he joined the Red Army and fought against the White Army during the Russian Civil War. The following year he joined the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka).^[4] His uncle, Dr. Mikhail Kedrov, was an associate of Vladimir Lenin and was the head of the Cheka's "Special Department," which monitored the Red Army.^[5] On July 18, 1921, Artuzov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner by the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

In the 1920s, Artuzov headed the Cheka's counterintelligence arm, KRO. In 1925 he wrote an operational manual called ABC of Counterintelligence, which recommended using ideologically based operations. An example of this strategy was Operation Trust, which lasted from 1922 to 1927, a series of phony monarchist/counter-revolutionary front organizations that monitored the activities of genuine activists.^[6]

Similarly, his Operation Syndicate-2 resulted in the arrest of Boris Savinkov, the head of the anti-Soviet emigrant organization "People's Union for the Defense of Motherland and Freedom". Another success of Artuzov was the arrest in 1925 of Sidney Reilly. Artuzov was the initiator and direct developer of Operation Tarantella.

Operation Trust was shut down in 1927, leading former Trust agent Alexander Kutepov to discover its true origins. Kutepov organized several terrorist operations inside the Soviet Union in retaliation, leading to Artuzov's dismissal in November. He was placed as second deputy assistant of the Secret Operations Directorate of OGPU, the Cheka's replacement, which was headed by Genrikh Yagoda, a protege of Joseph Stalin.^[7] Artuzov, a consummate professional spy, often clashed with the less extensively trained Yagoda.^[2]

Artuzov replaced Mikhail Trilisser as deputy head of the INO, the foreign intelligence directorate within OGPU, in October 1929. Trilisser had complained about Yagoda, his boss, at a Party meeting. Artuzov defended Yagoda and insisted that his senior position meant that he could only be held to account by the Party's Central Committee. Trilisser was dismissed and Artuzov promoted in his stead.^[8]

1930s

Encouraged by the success of Operation Trust, Artuzov spearheaded Operation Tarantella in 1930. A deception campaign aimed against British foreign intelligence, "the operation's broad aim was to convince London that industralisation of the Soviet Union was a huge success."^[9]

Artuzov was promoted to head the INO in 1931. Among his priorities was development of training courses for operatives; this was especially important because the organization was moving away from operations conducted under diplomatic cover, in favor of "illegal" operations.^[10]

During the command of Artuzov, the INO OGPU carried out dozens of operations, during which dozens of personnel and hundreds of agents were involved. An important aspect of the work of Soviet intelligence was the German work. Artuzov's employees created a network of agents that supplied the Soviet leadership with valuable information about the events that took place in the National Socialist Party of Germany, as well as about the activities of a number of state bodies and special services. During Artuzov's work in the Foreign Department of the OGPU, the famous illegal intelligence officers Fyodor Karin, Arnold Deutsch, Theodor Malli, Dmitry Bystroletov and others worked for Soviet intelligence.

In April and May 1934, Artuzov worked with Stalin to subsume the Fourth intelligence directorate (military intelligence) into the INO, citing the recent collapse of the Fourth's HUMINT efforts. In the process of this transition—under which Artuzov was charged with reviving the Fourth's capabilities—he was made deputy director of the Fourth directorate while also staying on as head of the INO. Later that year, both organizations would become part of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB)—itself under the umbrella of NKVD, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs.^[11]

According to Walter Krivitsky, who was working for Soviet military intelligence at the time, Artuzov accidentally angered Joseph Stalin at a meeting of the Politburo in June 1934, when they were discussing the possibility of an alliance with Poland against the rising threat from Nazi Germany. Artuzov correctly forecast that the Polish government would not consider the proposition.^[12] Artuzov stepped down as head of INO on May 21, 1935,^[13] and was appointed deputy head of military intelligence, the GRU. This was one of several personnel changes following dismissal of the long-serving head of the GRU, Yan Karlovich Berzin, which may have reflected Stalin's anxiety about Nazi Germany and Japanese expansion.

In 1936, Artuzov helped supervise Operation X, a program to arm the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.^[14]