By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 December 2025

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 August 2021

After the post looking at the relationship of Reuben Falber and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to the Soviet Union—namely the total subservience of the former to the latter—a follow-up was intended on the broader issue of the how the KGB and its predecessors interacted with the “fraternal” Parties around the world. Eighteen months later, this is that post. Let’s blame COVID.
The accusation that the Communist Parties around the world were fronts for the KGB was often derided as “McCarthyism” while the Cold War was going on. Arguments about that term in general to one side,[1] it certainly did not apply in this case. The accusations as stated were entirely factual. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 June 2021

Writing recently about the first meeting between Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco at Hendaye on 23 October 1940, where the Führer tried to enlist Spain into the Axis, I concluded, drawing on Franco: The Man and His Nation by George Hills, a former BBC journalist and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society: