Month: April 2019

Pope Francis makes little effort to conceal his distaste for President Trump. One policy especially, that of the border wall, causes pontifical ire that often spins out of control.

Back in 2016, the pope said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the Gospel.”

And a couple of months ago, His Holiness repeated the message in slightly different words: “Builders of walls, be they made of razor wire or bricks, will end up becoming prisoners of the walls they build.”

However, Francis graciously allowed that migration presents a problem: “I realise that with this problem, a government has a hot potato in its hands, but it must be resolved differently, humanely, not with razor wire.”

Allow me to sum up. Since the Gospel says nothing about the porous US-Mexican border, for Trump to be considered a Christian he must abandon the wall and solve the problem in some unspecified humane way, for example by building bridges over the Rio Grande.

This sounds a bit off the wall if you ask me. Yet His Holiness made some nostalgic memories stir in my mind. For back in the mid-70s I wrote an article on this very problem for a local Texas paper, in which I tried to find a solution but failed miserably.

I must admit that the idea of spanning the border river with bridges didn’t occur to me then, or if it did I must have dismissed it out of hand for being ever so slightly counterproductive.

More than 40 years later the problem still hasn’t been solved, humanely or otherwise. And, as it ever did, it still defies simplistic solutions – as does the problem of any mass migration.

Let’s just say that, for as long as a huge disparity in living conditions among countries persists (which means for ever), populations will shift and drift. All Western governments struggle to control illegal migration; none has succeeded in stopping it altogether.

Yet simple arithmetic shows that some control is essential to the survival of the host nation. If, for example, the UK opted for unlimited, rather than merely promiscuous, immigration, the country would be turned into a caliphate within one generation, which few this side of Jeremy Corbyn would see as a welcome development.

The US is a different country from Britain, and the problem of Mexican immigration isn’t the same as what we face here. Still, about a third of the population in the four border states is Mexican already, and some demographers predict that this proportion will reach half by mid-century.

History buffs will point out that the border states were parts of Mexico two centuries ago and were then brutally conquered by the Americans – the Alamo can be remembered in different ways.

That is as true as it’s irrelevant: taking such a broad historical sweep would deny legitimate present ownership of just about every territory in the world. When Texas and California were parts of Mexico, India was in the British empire, Hungary and Austria were the same country, and Alaska belonged to Russia. So what?

How serious is the problem of specifically Mexican migration to the US? Serious enough, especially if you don’t own a construction company there.

Surveys show that only about half of all Mexicans speak English well, and the importance of language as a cultural and social adhesive can’t be overestimated. Realising this, Miriam A. Ferguson, prewar governor of Texas, vetoed a bilingual education bill, saying: “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”

Things have changed since then: Texans may or may not have figured out what language Jesus actually spoke, but bilingual education has been introduced, which can’t do much good for social cohesion.

The problem isn’t only cultural but also financial since about a third of all Mexicans receive at least some welfare payments. Yet, by the looks of it, almost all bricklayers in Texas are Mexican, which shows that, when migrants do work, they often do the jobs that the indigenous population shuns (just think about working on a building site in 95 degrees and 95 per cent humidity).

This is about as far as my balanced approach can take me. There would be no point going further anyway: if a country’s government feels that immigration presents a problem, it does. Every nation, naturally unless an EU member, has a right to control its borders.

How it’s done is predicated on many specific factors, including those of geography. Since no European country has 2,000 miles of border with any other country, perhaps we don’t appreciate the magnitude of the problem facing Americans.

We may regard it as a hot potato, as the pope does, but some may see it as a delayed action bomb ticking away. So how can it be diffused in a Christian way to the pontiff’s satisfaction?

The short answer is, it can’t – for the simple reason that it’s not the purpose of Christian doctrine to offer nitty-gritty solutions to the quotidian problems of this world.

When Christ specified the exact location of his kingdom, he absolved the church of any day-to-day responsibility to ponder the practical details of government – as Pope Francis has done. It is, however, within the church’s remit to comment on the morality of world politics from the standpoint of Christian morality and eschatology.

However, applying Christian doctrine to politics is a risky endeavour – not because no overlap exists, but because it’s hard to find.

Much as we’d like to see this world run according to the Sermon on the Mount, it never was, never is and never will be. Even Christendom wasn’t exactly Christian in that sense: the Gospel never issued any specific instructions on how, say, to check Islamic expansion or to overcome the fallout of the Black Death.

Yet both warriors like Charles Martel and all those monks and nuns who ministered to the dying were inspired by the general spirit of their faith and of their church, militant one day, self-sacrificially merciful the next.

Thus His Holiness would be justified in delivering a homily along the lines of “neither Jew nor Greek…: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” A reminder wouldn’t go amiss either that, because all men are brothers in Christ, it’s a Christian duty to feed the hungry and take in the homeless.

However, to be sound, such a homily would have to include a disclaimer that it shouldn’t be taken as a how-to guide to government immigration policy, much less as a blessing or anathemising of specific steps.

The moment a prelate descends from the kingdom that is not of this world and starts talking practicalities, he is inviting the question in the title above, possibly accompanied by ridicule. That does no good for either the church or the state – or, for that matter, public morality.

If you think this pun is infantile, consider the source.

For the line indeed comes from an infant, my friend’s 5-year-old son, whom I knew when I first arrived in the US. “You know why they call it Russia?” asked that precocious tot. “Because people are rushing out of it.”

It’s scary to think that little Andrew is in his 50s now, and doesn’t time fly. But his little quip was more in the nature of prognosis than reportage. For very few people were leaving Russia in those days, the odd thousand or two here or there.

Many more would doubtless have liked to leave, but in those days it was difficult. Now emigration is as easy as it’s desirable, and the numbers are staggering.

Just in the past five years, 1.7 million Russians have emigrated. That places Russia third to only India and Mexico in this category, and comfortably ahead of China, Bangladesh, Syria and Pakistan.

Moreover, a recent Gallup poll shows that an impressive 20 per cent of the population would leave if an opportunity presented itself. That proportion grows from impressive to astounding among young people: 44 per cent of those in the 15-29 age group want to emigrate. Almost half.

Most of those who’ve already settled in the US, Britain and Germany cite non-economic reasons for their flight, such as the general political atmosphere, absence of political freedoms, human rights violations and so on, although bleak economic prospects figure prominently as well.

During the same period, the number of emigrants boasting a university diploma or higher has quadrupled, turning this exodus into a veritable brain drain. Such numbers have been seen only twice in Russian history: after the 1917 revolution and following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Actually, if most of those Russians wanted to leave for strictly economic reasons, I wouldn’t find it in my heart to blame them. For another survey shows that 20 per cent of all Russians have no indoor plumbing and over 80 per cent can’t afford what Dr Johnson called “the necessaries of life” – including emergency medical expenses.

In another poll, Russia comes in at 51 out of 56 countries rated for quality of life, behind Pakistan and Egypt. And according to Russia’s own data, 28 million live under the poverty level of $175 a month.

But then, as the billionaire government officials never tire to assure the world, true Russians disdain soulless materialism (until they come to the West, that is, where they’re seduced into it while still clearing passport control).

It’s in light of such data that Putin’s policies, both foreign and domestic, become explicable. In fact, neither the policies nor the reasons for them can boast much novelty appeal.

For every Russian government, from the tsars to the presidents, with general secretaries in between, has relied on oppression at home and sabre rattling abroad to deflect mass discontent into pandemic xenophobia and pride about Russia’s martial strength.

In its maniacal pursuit of ‘greatness’, defined as aggressive brawn, none of those governments had any energy left to pursue goodness; nor could any of them create an economy in which people could support themselves.

Call me a soulless materialist, but I just can’t see as great a 21^st century country in which 20 per cent of the population have to brave cold, snow or rain to trudge to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

Putin’s kleptofascist junta has been in power for almost 20 years now, during which time it has stamped out inchoate civic liberties, criminalised the economy from top to bottom, turned global money laundering into a growth industry and divided the population into three categories: those who’ve already left, those who’d like to leave, and those duped by Goebbels-style propaganda into foaming at the mouth and screaming “Our Crimea!!!”

Add to this the regime’s criminality that goes beyond mere corruption, entering the area of rabid foreign adventures, international assassinations  (including those with chemical and radioactive weapons), incessant attempts to undermine Western countries and their political systems, constant threats of nuclear holocaust, and only one Russian mystery remains.

How can supposedly clever Westerners, including those who call themselves conservatives, still sing hosannas to Putin, the “strong leader” they wish we had? Oh well, as P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

It says something about the efficacy of the Mother of All Parliaments that its roof developed a leak today, with cold water pouring onto the heads of the people’s representatives.

The nation will therefore be deprived of another instalment in the on-going saga of ineptitude, idiocy and betrayal, which can’t be qualified as treason only due to the possible absence of mens rea.

Although plumbing isn’t one of the MPs’ direct responsibilities, the mishap certainly has plenty of symbolic value. And not only that: the Commons had to be suspended, meaning there won’t be any Brexit debate on Monday.

Whatever entertainment is thereby lost is compensated for by another torrent – that of jokes already flooding the social media. Many of them revolve around the possibility that it wasn’t just burst water pipes that rained on the Commons parade.

The Commons authorities have taken such jokes seriously enough to issue a denial. “We would like to clarify that this was not a sewage leak,” they said.

That brings to mind another story, one that happened in a faraway land almost a century ago.

When Lenin died, his comrades decided to mummify him like an Egyptian pharaoh and then use the sacred relics to attract worshippers from across the world. The mummy is still there in Red Square, although the once mighty stream of pilgrims has diminished to a trickle.

Yet the granite ziggurat housing the neo-pagan idol took a while to build. For the first eight months after Lenin’s death his mausoleum was a temporary wooden structure hastily erected by the architect Alexey Shchusev, who immediately began to design the now-familiar eyesore.

However, while the construction work was underway, the builders accidentally punctured a sewage pipe, flooding the sarcophagus with its malodorous contents. Many observers detected the hand of God in the mishap, and jokes were flying about then, just as they are now.

Patriarch Nikon, who at the time was held under house arrest, led the way. His Holiness commented on the accident with the wit not commonly exhibited by the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. “The incense,” he quipped, “fits the relics.”

One can’t second-guess God, but perhaps he ought to have made his feelings known as clearly now as he did then.

The Ministry of Defence called it “unacceptable”. Labour said it was “alarming”. A Tory MP called it “disgraceful”. Social media called it “fascist”. I call it a possible taste of things to come.

Such were responses to a video that shows four British paratroopers in Afghanistan using a picture of Corbyn for pistol practice. The clip testifies to the fine standards of marksmanship in the Parachute Regiment, with several rounds hitting Jeremy’s visage smack in the bull’s-eye.

Had it been a live Jeremy, rather than his pictorial representation, he’d be in no position to destroy the country those Paras are ready to die for. But it wasn’t; so he is.

I wouldn’t read too much into this incident, and those indignant chaps should lighten up. When they aren’t in action, the Paras’ existence is dreary, the nightlife in Kabul is understated, and this could have been just their way to get some comic relief.

However, assuming that every joke is at least tangentially based on reality, one could perhaps infer that the soldiers are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of Jeremy doing to Britain what his idol Maduro is doing to Venezuela.

Their chosen mode of political self-expression may be seen as controversial in some quarters, but I for one find it hard to take issue with the underlying sentiment.

Rory Stewart, Conservative minister for prisons, disagrees: “They should not be political – they are there to defend the country and the Queen.” This statement reinforces my heartfelt belief that MPs should take an IQ test before standing for election.

It takes a moron not to spot such a glaring oxymoron in his own statement. Mr Stewart seems to think that defending the country and the Queen has nothing to do with politics.

One struggles to think of anything else it has to do with. Sport? Entertainment? Travel? Or does he believe those men should kill and die as unthinking automata who’ll draw a bead on anyone they’re told to shoot without even understanding why?

Still, the men risking their lives in that godforsaken place must be grateful to Mr Stewart for clarifying their role in life. On second thoughts, they’re probably aware of it already.

And I’m sure they’d describe it in those very terms: defending the country and the Queen. But against what and whom?

It’s a logical solecism to believe that those who present a threat to Queen and country can only ever be found in faraway places like Afghanistan. Some evildoers wishing to destroy Her Majesty’s realm may well be native-born.

Anyone who is even cursorily familiar with Corbyn’s plans for Britain and also with the people he regards as friends will be aware of the cataclysmic havoc his Trotskyist government will wreak.

From Marx and Trotsky to the IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Chavez and Maduro, Corbyn has never met an evil energumen he couldn’t love – and emulate. Even before his electoral victory, he’s already talking the language of Mao’s Red Guard, vowing to “re-educate” Treasury officials in Marxist economics.

This intention doesn’t come from a touching concern for those mandarins’ general erudition. They’ll need to learn Marxist economics because it’ll be the guide to Britain’s economy under Corbyn.

His views on immigration are brutally simple: no limit whatsoever. One can understand that because Marxism is impossible to practise without a steady supply of slave labour, and training the indigenous population to act in that capacity may take a while.

Those soldiers sense that whoever it is they’re fighting in Afghanistan can at worst only wound Britain with the odd pinprick. Corbyn, on the other hand, presents a deadly threat to the country and the Queen. They understand it – too bad some ministers of the Crown don’t.

Yesterday Theresa May effectively handed 10 Downing Street keys to Corbyn by making him responsible for Brexit, or rather for killing it stone dead. Suddenly that evil apparition acquired an aura of statesmanlike respectability, something that the Tory party demonstrably lacks.

Those sharpshooting Paras know it, and one can forgive their gesture of frustration and helplessness. They can only vent those emotions by shooting at a picture, not the real thing.

The choir of indignant din brings back the memories of Stalin’s Russia, when loo paper didn’t exist, at least not for hoi-polloi. People had to make do with torn newspaper sheets, but they had to be careful.

Using for lavatorial purposes a page featuring Stalin’s photo was treated as tantamount to an assassination attempt – and dealt with accordingly. But we aren’t in Stalin’s Russia now, and abusing Corbyn’s picture is nothing other than a puerile prank.

But one that raises a serious question. If we agree that democracy isn’t a suicide pact, what recourse do we have to prevent the democratic ascent to government of a Hitler, a Stalin or, for that matter, a Corbyn?

Assassination (of a man, that is, not a piece of paper) isn’t a solution that can be seriously recommended for both moral and practical reasons. The moral reasons are self-explanatory, while the practical ones are almost so.

Corbyn doesn’t personify his ‘philosophy’ as comprehensively as, say, Hitler embodied his. Putting a bullet through Hitler’s head in 1936 could have conceivably prevented a tragedy; shooting Corbyn would have no such prophylactic effect.

But, if the government can no longer govern in ways that protect the country and the Queen, can a case be made for the army to step in? Desperate times calling for desperate measures and all that?

I can’t answer that question – and wouldn’t even if I could. Let’s just say that, by the looks of it, some British soldiers seem to differ from some British ministers in their understanding of what it takes to defend the country and the Queen.

When I arrived in the US back in 1973, Americans invariably asked me what amazed me the most. Supermarkets? Department stores? Cars?

No, none of those, I’d reply. I had expected to find a consumer cornucopia, and the same went for things like free elections. No surprises there.

Astonishment was caused by something else entirely: seeing that people of different political views could be friends or even spouses. And even if they were neither friends nor spouses, they remained civil towards one another.

Where I came from, politics killed. It divided the people into victims and executioners, not into debaters who could have a muted argument and then walk into a bar together.

Some 15 years later I moved to Britain and eventually also to France, part-time. In these countries, especially the latter, politics was more febrile than in the US c. 1973 (things have changed there since then), but still not to a point of widespread personal hostility.

Obviously, politics doesn’t matter so much in places where it cleaves without destroying. People have more important things to worry about: mortgages, medical care, children’s education, holidays and where their next cleaning woman is going to come from.

Those things are of course affected by politics, but not everybody discerns the links. And in any case none of this is really a matter of life or death. Worse comes to worst, the wife can do her own hoovering for a while, unless she can appeal to feminism and make hubby-wubby chip in.

We can all still be friends, political differences notwithstanding, can’t we? Well, yes, provided we all stay in the mainstream. The closer to its margins politics moves, and especially if it goes beyond the signposts, the more serious it gets – the more it becomes a matter of life or death, or even things worse than death.

Two more anecdotes then, both involving the late Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm, considered to be an intellectual giant in some circles.

Those circles are quite vicious. For it takes warped moral values to credit an unrepentant Stalinist with cleverness without qualifying the praise with a reminder that he’s a champion of carnage and slavery on a uniquely epic scale.

Mercifully, not everyone feels about Hobsbawm that way. Many years ago, he invited Miriam Gross, at that time literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph, out to lunch. “I’ll never go to lunch with you, Eric,” replied Mrs Gross. “Why not?” The Stalinist was genuinely perplexed. “Because,” said that brilliant woman, “if the political situation were different, you’d kill me.”

I wish we had more people able to see politics, and its links to personal relationships, as clearly. Scaling down from there, I too had a vicarious brush with Hobsbawm.

He sat on the advisory board of the publishing house that was about to bring out one of my books. The publisher wanted to get a peer review from Hobsbawm, and he asked me if I wanted to meet the venerable gentleman. “Absolutely not,” I said. “And if I did meet him, I’d refuse to shake his hand.”

This is merely an illustration of my contention that, as politics moves towards the extreme, the stakes become intolerably high, and there’s little place left for bonhomie. We’re no longer friends with divergent opinions. We’re implacable enemies, and the devil take the hindmost.

This is regrettable, unhealthy and divisive – which is why such a situation is best to be avoided. But then the same goes for a street brawl: do all you can to prevent it, but if it’s unavoidable you’d better know how to handle yourself.

Such pugilistic analogies are no longer alien to British politics, and the sooner we realise this, the better. The very political, which in Britain’s case means vital, nature of the country is under dire threat.

Two threats, to be exact, although they are interrelated: the EU and Corbyn. Let’s start with the one I see as marginally less deadly.

The unseemly squabble following the Brexit referendum has emphasised and aggravated the bankruptcy of our democracy-run-riot, as it has become. Whatever the pluses and minuses of universal franchise (and I think the latter outweigh the former), it can only succeed when balanced with numerous political, social, moral and educational counterweights.

In the absence of such, democracy degenerates into spivocracy, a government of self-serving nonentities constantly striving to distance themselves from the electorate for fear of being found out. Hence their urge to move the centre of British government out of the reach of British voters – not just politically but also geographically.

If, as seems likely, they prevail and effectively turn the British monarch into an EU citizen, Britain will have a hard time being Britain again: politics is her pulsating heart, and it can be neither ripped out nor surgically replaced with a transplant.

This is the immediate damage that takes no fortune-telling powers to predict. The full extent of the long-term psychological damage, caused by everyone realising, not before time, that politicians can never be trusted, is harder to assess. But it’ll be huge, and this regardless of the outcome of the current mess.

The second threat, closely related to the first, is even deadlier: the looming possibility of a Britain governed by Marxist ghouls, a gang of Eric Hobsbawm clones, minus even pretensions of intellect.

While staying in the EU will be harmful, the damage won’t be eternal – because the EU isn’t. That retarded child of megalomaniac European semi-intellectuals is a gross contrivance that will eventually, soon I hope, be set ablaze by its internal and innate contradictions.

Being inside a burning house is worse than enjoying the spectacle from across the street, but at least one can throw a wet bed sheet over one’s head and run out. But being locked in is fatal – and this metaphor describes the effects of a Corbyn government with deadly accuracy.

A normal, common-or-garden Labour government can be confidently expected to wreak havoc that will be undone by a subsequent Tory administration only partly , especially now that the Tories have become Labour Lite.

Every socialist government, Labour Lite or Full Strength, will cause erosion. But it won’t necessarily cause an instant and irreversible catastrophe, which is something we can look forward to if Mrs May’s new ally Corbyn moves into 10 Downing Street.

Using their much-admired Venezuela as the role model, all those Corbyns-McDonnells-Abbotts won’t govern the country – they’ll occupy it and treat it the way Marxist invaders always treat their conquered nations.

The economic collapse that’ll follow within weeks of their election will be the least of our problems, for economies can be repaired. A murdered nation can’t be: no Lazarus will come back to life; no Phoenix will rise from the ashes.

Can we be civil to such people and their supporters? A civil war leaves no room for civility, is my answer. Yours will depend on whether you agree that we’re indeed in the midst of civil war, not a friendly political debate.

Anyone who not only knows Russian history but has also lived it will agree that many Western commentators know little about this subject and understand even less.

Yet Dominic Sandbrook doesn’t know it at all, if his review of Owen Matthews’s book An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent is any indication.

You can judge a book neither by its cover nor by its reviews. However, if Sandbrook’s effort has anything in common with Matthews’s, the book must be irredeemably ignorant.

Unlike most Western writers, Sandbrook isn’t even conscientious enough to do some basic research, which is most unfortunate in a man who calls himself a historian. Hence the review bulges with factual errors bespeaking nothing but an eagerness to collect a few hundred quid for a piece of slipshod hack work.

For example, Sandbrook writes: “In the summer of 1941, [Sorge] had repeatedly warned Moscow that Hitler was planning to invade the Soviet Union, only for disbelieving Stalin to tell his security chief: ‘You can send your ‘source’… to his f****** mother’.”

Sorge did issue several warnings to that effect, and Stalin did write something along those lines. However, Sandbrook could have been saved from an ignorant error had he actually read Stalin’s remark in its entirety.

Allow me to fill in this blank, using the attached autograph that has been reproduced in countless books and articles. “To Com. Merkulov [head of the NKGB, later KGB]: You can tell your ‘source’ at the Ger[man] Air Force General Headquarters to f*** off. He’s not a source but a disinformer.”

Sorge of course never went anywhere near the Luftwaffe General HQ. At that time he operated in Tokyo, where he had unlimited access to the German embassy with all its documents. Also, he spied for military intelligence, not NKGB, and Merkulov wasn’t the one who processed his reports.

Hence Stalin’s obscene comment couldn’t have had anything to do with Sorge, and it didn’t. The source in question was Oberleutnant Schulze-Boysen, a Soviet agent codenamed Starshina (‘Sergeant-Major’), who indeed served in the Luftwaffe.

Stalin was at the time receiving scores of such warnings from all sorts of sources, including those two, the Rote Kapelle spy ring, Winston Churchill and many others. He ignored them all, yet his disdainful treatment of Sorge had a particular explanation.

Stalin was weeding out his officer corps, including military intelligence. Thousands of officers were imprisoned and executed, including two intelligence chiefs, Artuzov and Berzin, who handled Sorge personally, and many other spymasters.

Whole Soviet networks were being recalled to Moscow, where most officers shared the fate of their bosses. Sorge was recalled too, in 1937 (not 1936, as Sandbrook seems to think), but he was smarter than most.

He refused to go back, explaining, not in so many words, that he was too busy to face a firing squad just yet, thank you very much. Hence in Stalin’s eyes he became a defector, what the Soviets called a ‘non-returner’.

All support for his network, including financing, was cut off, and Sorge was left to his own devices. Yet, hoping to return to Stalin’s good graces, he continued to finance his operations out of his own funds.

However, Stalin did believe his information that Japan wasn’t going to attack the Soviet Union. The reason for that sudden outburst of credulity was simple: having broken the Japanese diplomatic codes, Moscow already knew that no Japanese attack was on the cards in 1941.

Sorge therefore provided only a confirmation, but it was doubtless a valuable confirmation. As a result, Stalin no longer needed to keep vast contingents (18 divisions, 1,700 tanks and over 1,500 aircraft) in the Far East, and they could be used elsewhere.

This is how Sandbrook describes this breakthrough: “Stalin promptly transferred thousands of troops from Siberia towards Stalingrad. It is no exaggeration to say that Sorge’s information changed the course of the war.”

Neither is it any exaggeration to say that Sandbrook is most refreshingly ignorant. Dates alone should have tipped him off.

Sorge issued his confirmation of SigInt in mid-September, 1941, after which the Far Eastern troops were immediately transferred. Yet the battle of Stalingrad only began on 23 August, 1942.

In the interim, another event happened that “changed the course of the war”: the battle of Moscow that began on 2 October – and it was this battle that the Soviets won largely thanks to the infusion of the fresh Far Eastern divisions.

In other words, Sandbrook doesn’t know when Sorge issued his warning, when the troops were transferred and – most staggering – when the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad were fought. The chap would have to resit the history exam at any Russian primary school.

Sandbrook doesn’t mention the really interesting facts about Sorge, which probably means that neither does Matthews. That’s a pity, for Sorge was a much more mysterious figure than the review would lead one to believe.

Sandbrook correctly mentions that the Japanese hanged Sorge for espionage after he was eventually busted. But he doesn’t say why they did so, nor, critically, when.

Sorge was arrested in October, 1941, and executed in November, 1944. And there’s the rub: the Soviet Union didn’t declare war on Japan until 8 August, 1945.

This chronology should have saved Sorge, for Japan’s laws were rather lenient on espionage. A spy risked only a couple of years’ imprisonment – unless he spied for a country with which Japan was at war.

Since the USSR wasn’t at war with Japan at the time, Sorge couldn’t have been executed as a Soviet spy. Yet executed he was – but in a different capacity.

It’s common knowledge that Sorge was a double agent from 1929, when, according to Sandbrook, he “was recruited by Red Army Intelligence [because] he had a flair for courting Nazi diplomats.”

That flair was a dubious distinction at the time, what with precious few Nazi diplomats being available for courtship in 1929, but let’s not be too pedantic about this. It is, however, well-known that Sorge was a servant to two masters – at least.

Otherwise it would be hard to explain how he got such easy access to Nazi secrets. Sorge’s great-uncle was a close associate of Marx and Engels, and Sorge himself, born in Baku to a German father and Russian mother, was a well-known communist who kept shuttling between Berlin and Moscow.

Though he eventually joined the Nazi party (as did many other communists), his biography should have made the noses of Nazi counterintelligence twitch. So it did.

At one point the spy was vetted by SD intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg – and yet Sorge was allowed to indulge his “flair for courting Nazi diplomats”. The reason is simple: he passed intelligence not only to the Soviets but also to the Nazis.

Yet Germany wasn’t at war with Japan either. Only one country with which Sorge was associated and where he had lived for a while was fighting Japan at the time: Britain. Hence there’s only one explanation: Sorge was hanged as a British spy.

If he was indeed hanged, that is. All sorts of stories surround this shadowy figure, including one saying that the Soviets exchanged Sorge for some Japanese spies and then summarily executed him in Krasnoyarsk.

Though never verified, this rumour tallies with Sorge’s status as a ‘non-returner’ and also with his rather confused professional allegiances. It also explains why Sorge’s name was never mentioned in the Soviet Union until 1964, when he was suddenly catapulted from oblivion onto postage stamps and into articles, books, films and TV documentaries.

Sandbrook should really learn Russian history, if only its modern period. Coming to the subject afresh, he’ll find it fascinating. At the very least, he might be saved from displaying embarrassing ignorance.