kek,
Kotkin's telling of the revolution and Stalin's successful coup against the Communist Party is farcical. Just one instance below:
Fanny Efimovna Kaplan (Russian: Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н; real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat, Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a Jewish woman from Russia best known for her failed attempt to assassinate Vladimir Lenin, although it is possible she may have been a scapegoat.
On August 30, 1918, Lenin spoke at the Hammer and Sickle, an arms factory in south Moscow.[7] As Lenin left the building and before he entered his car, Kaplan called out to him. When Lenin turned towards her, she fired three shots with a Browning pistol.[1] One bullet passed through Lenin's coat, the other two struck him: one passing through his neck, puncturing part of his left lung, and stopping near his right collarbone; the other lodging in his left shoulder.[1][8]
Lenin was taken back to his living quarters at the Kremlin. He feared there might be other plotters planning to kill him and refused to leave the security of the Kremlin to seek medical attention. Doctors were brought in to treat him but were unable to remove the bullets outside of a hospital. Despite the severity of his injuries, Lenin survived. However, Lenin's health never fully recovered from the attack and it is believed the shooting contributed to the strokes that incapacitated and eventually killed him in 1924.
and I love this part... although it is possible she may have been a scapegoat.
Sound familiar?
Full wiki on Fanny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Kaplan
Recall, Lenin and other revolutionaries in Switzerland were put on a sealed train by the Germans and slipped over the border into Russia. Trotsky was transported from New York thru Canada on to Russia. There's viruses and then there are viruses.
Once it became clear that much of the Russia Hoax had MI6 fingerprints on it, both in the planning and execution, I started looking for historical echoes of this particular kind of skulduggery. That research lead to the fascinating history of Sidney Reilly and the equally fascinating history of the fabrication of the myth of him as "Reilly - Ace of Spies." All that research has simplified the requirement of suspending disbelief to be enable distillation of fact from fiction as the Russia Hoax unravels in real time before our eyes. Far from being an ace of spies, Reilly was very much like Stefan Halper, always playing both ends against the middle, betraying anyone and everyone, using the insider's knowledge he gained under the mantel of "sanctioned" intelligence operative to always make a lot of money at the same time he is blackmailing and bribing for this or that government that wanted results but with deniability.
Here's a list of books, TV movies / programs based on the books, and other related material which have been very useful in comprehending what damage a semi-rogue contract intelligence operative can do, and not only get away with, but get rich at the same time. At one point Reilly sold off his extensive collection of Napoleon memorabilia to fund counter revolutionary operations in Bolshevik Russia in support of the Whites. It obviously failed and the eventual payback was lethal.
Britain's Master Spy - 1933 - While supposedly written (prior to his death in 1925) by Reilly and edited by one of his wives (he married for money or cover for action) - it is anybody's guess who in British Intelligence really wrote this book. It was published in 1933 after a series of fake news articles published in 1931 in the London newspaper The Evening Standard which are the original basis of the Reilly-as-master-spy mythology.
Vickers / A Story - J. D. Scott - 1962 - A history of the arms manufacturer, of interest is the information on Sir Basil Zaharoff - another Halper-like off the books spy - but with royal connections - sometimes employer, sometimes ally, sometimes competitor, sometimes enemy of Reilly. Zaharoff basically ran his own private international intelligence agency (of which Vickers was a major client in addition to the British government).
Ace Of Spies - Robin Bruce Lockhart - 1967 - Lockhart was one of Ian Fleming's WWII colleague's, and a direct source of information about Reilly. Those stories and further research in WWI British intelligence files on Reilly were the source material for the character of James Bond.
A History of the Japanese Secret Service - Kempei Tai - Richard Deacon - 1983. Deacon quips that the only major intelligence service that Reilly did not work for at one time or the other was the Israeli service, and only because he had been dead for over twenty years when Israel became a nation.
Trust No One - The Secret World of Sidney Reilly - Richard B. Spence - 2002
Ace of Spies - The True Story of Sidney Reilly - Andrew Cook - 2008
If anyone is curious enough to go down this road - read Cook first. Because new material had been declassified by the time he was researching, and he was able to access official Russian sources on Reilly, Cook methodically demythifies the Reilly legend... the best part being confirmation that he was born near Odessa in the Ukraine - gone full circle now.... Provides a clear and well sourced narrative that allows for keeping on the right track. All you old Hash House Harriers get the drift.
Reilly - Ace of Spies - DVD of the 1983 British TV series starring Sam Neill is based on the Lockhart mythology and is helpful as well made historical period pieces are for creating visual images (clothes, cars, manners, etc., of the time) even if the tales told are factually tall.
The Sandbaggers - TV Series 1/2/3 1978/79 - Not a source material for anything associated with Reilly, but I found these programs to be very informative. Written by Ian Mackintosh, another WWII (highly decorated) intelligence officer, the realism of the intersection of British politics and intelligence is not like any other "spy" shows or films out there. Mackintosh wrote scripts that went right up to the edge, and in a book written by Robert G. Folsom, [The Life and Mysterious Death of Ian Mackintosh] were realistic to point that more than one "unofficial request" was made to tone it down. This is not Le Carre romanticiztion of the spy genre, but something altogether different, almost educational in a "there's a deep state out there and you have to work hard to keep it at bay" kind of way from an insider's perspective.
All of the above were useful, again, in providing a framework for getting a window on the British contribution to the Russia Hoax. I keep wondering if the Russia Hoax was really an American coup or a British intelligence operation... maybe it was both.
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts..."
Not breast... Brest.
Santayana