Spartacus Educational

The Zinoviev Letter and the Russian Report: A Story of Two General Elections

Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee decided to look into the possibility of Russian interference in the EU Referendum and the 2017 General Election. It's report was finished in March, 2019. By 17th October, the final draft of the report had been agreed by the intelligence and security agencies. According to The Sunday Times "Britain's intelligence agencies are understood to be 'furious' about the delay in releasing the report because measures to protect sensitive information have already been taken." It seems possible that someone who has seen the report has leaked some of it to the newspaper: "Nine Russian business people who gave money to the Conservative Party are named in a secret intelligence report on the threats posed to UK democracy that was suppressed last week by Number 10."

In September, 1997, Spartacus Educational founder and managing director John Simkin became the first educational publisher in Britain to establish a website that was willing to provide teachers and students with free educational materials.

According to a survey carried out by the Fischer Trust, Spartacus Educational is one of the top three websites used by history teachers and students in Britain (the other two are BBC History and the Public Record Office’s Learning Curve). The Spartacus Educational website currently gets up to 7 million page impressions a month and 3 million unique visitors.

As well as running the Spartacus Educational website John Simkin has also produced material for the Electronic Telegraph, the European Virtual School and the Guardian's educational website, Learn. He was also a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), a project to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent.

We have published six e-books, Charles Dickens: A Biography (October, 2012), First World War Encyclopedia (October, 2012), Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia (November, 2012), Gandhi: A Biography (December, 2012), The Spanish Civil War (December, 2012) and The American Civil War (December, 2012). He also contributed an article to the recently published book, Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History (December, 2012).