Committee for State Security or KGB, subordinate to the council of ministers of the USSR. Chiefs of foreign intelligence The first chief of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, Cheka foreign department (Inostranny Otdel—INO), was Yakov Davydov. He headed the foreign department until late 1921, when he was replaced by longtime revolutionary Solomon Mogilevsky. He led INO only for few months, as in 1925 he died in a plane crash. He was replaced by Mikhail Trilisser, also a revolutionary. Trilisser specialized in tracing secret enemy informers and political spies inside the Bolshevik party. Before becoming INO chief, he led its Section of Western and Eastern Europe. Under Trilisser's management, foreign intelligence had become big professionally and respected by their opponent's services. This period characterized the enlisting of foreign agents, wide use of emigrants for intelligence tasks and organization of a network of independent agents. Trilisser himself was very active, personally traveling to Berlin and Paris for meetings with important agents. Trilisser left his position in 1930, and was replaced by Artur Artuzov, the former chief of department of counter-intelligence (KRO) and main initiator of the Trust Operation. In 1936, Artuzov was replaced by then State Security Commissar 2nd rank Abram Slutsky. Slutsky was an active participant of the October Revolution and Russian Civil War. He had started work in security organs in 1920 by joining Cheka and later working in OGPU, Economic Department. Then in 1931, he went to serve in OGPU's Foreign Department (INO), and often left the country for Germany, France and Spain, where he participated in the Spanish Civil War. In February 1938, Slutsky was invited to the office of GUGB head komkor Mikhail Frinovsky, where he was poisoned and died. Slutsky was replaced by Zelman Passov, but soon he was arrested and murdered, his successor Sergey Spigelglas had met with the same fate, and by the end of 1938, he was arrested and murdered. The next chief (acting) of Foreign Department for only three weeks was the experienced NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov. Before he became INO head in May, 1938, on Stalin's direct order, he personally assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist leader Yavhen Konovalets. Later in June 1941, Sudoplatov was placed in charge of the NKVD's Special Missions Directorate, whose principal task was to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines in wartime (both it and the Foreign Department had also been used to carry out assassinations abroad).