Spartacus Blog

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

The last time a general election was held in December was in 1923. The election was called by Stanley Baldwin, who had become prime minister in May on the death of Andrew Bonar Law from cancer. Baldwin was faced with growing economic problems. This included a high-level of unemployment. Baldwin believed protectionist tariffs would revive industry and employment. However, Bonar Law had pledged in 1922 that there would be no changes in tariffs in the present parliament. Baldwin came to the conclusion that he needed a General Election to unite his party behind this new policy. On 12th November, Baldwin asked the king to dissolve parliament. (1)

Baldwin was confident he would win the 1923 General Election that took place on 6th December. The Conservative Party, with 258 MPs, was indeed the largest party, but had failed to win an overall majority because the Labour Party, won 191 seats, and increase of 48 on the 1922 General Eelection. Baldwin offered Herbert Asquith, the leader of the Liberal Party, the opportunity of forming a coalition government. As Asquith had campaigned on a platform of free trade, it was an offer he had to reject. Asquith told Baldwin "if a Labour Government were ever to be tried in Britain... it could hardly be tried under safer conditions". On 22nd January, 1924 Baldwin resigned. At midday, the 57 year-old, Ramsay MacDonald went to Buckingham Palace to be appointed prime minister. He later recalled how George V complained about the singing of the Red Flag and the La Marseilles, at the Labour Party meeting in the Albert Hall a few days before. MacDonald apologized but claimed that there would have been a riot if he had tried to stop it. (2)

Members of establishment were appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. As Gill Bennett pointed out: "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion." (3)

The most hostile response to the new Labour government was Lord Northcliffe, the owner of several Conservative supporting newspapers. For example, The Daily Mail claimed: "The British Labour Party, as it impudently calls itself, is not British at all. It has no right whatever to its name. By its humble acceptance of the domination of the Sozialistische Arbeiter Internationale's authority at Hamburg in May it has become a mere wing of the Bolshevist and Communist organisation on the Continent. It cannot act or think for itself." (4)

Two days after forming the first Labour government Ramsay MacDonald received a note from General Borlass Childs of Special Branch that said "in accordance with custom" a copy was enclosed of his weekly report on revolutionary movements in Britain. MacDonald wrote back that the weekly report would be more useful if it also contained details of the "political activities... of the Fascist movement in this country". Childs wrote back that he had never thought it right to investigate movements which wished to achieve their aims peacefully. In reality, MI5 was already working very closely with the British Fascisti, that had been established in 1923. (5)

Maxwell Knight was the British Fascisti's Director of Intelligence. In this role he had responsibility for compiling intelligence dossiers on its enemies; for planning counter-espionage and for establishing and supervising fascist cells operating in the trade union movement. This information was then passed onto Vernon Kell, Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau (MI5). Later Maxwell Knight was placed in charge of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion. (6)

Over the next few months the Conservative Party, MI5, and the newspaper barons worked together to undermine the Labour government, with stories that attempted to link the Labour Party with the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Bolshevik government. The first opportunity to do this was when on 25th July 1924, the Worker's Weekly, a newspaper controlled by the Communist Party of Great Britain, published an "Open Letter to the Fighting Forces" that had been written anonymously by Harry Pollitt. The article called on soldiers to "let it be known that, neither in the class war nor in a military war, will you turn your guns on your fellow workers, but instead will line up with your fellow workers in an attack upon the exploiters and capitalists and will use your arms on the side of your own class." (7)

After consultations with the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Hastings, it was decided to arrest and charge, John Ross Campbell, the editor of the newspaper, with incitement to mutiny. The following day, Hastings had to answer questions in the House of Commons on the case. However, after investigating Campbell in more detail he discovered that he was only acting editor at the time the article was published, he began to have doubts about the success of a prosecution. (8)

The matter was further complicated when James Maxton informed Hastings about Campbell's war record.
In 1914, Campbell was posted to the Clydeside section of the Royal Naval division and served throughout the war. Wounded at Gallipoli, he was permanently disabled at the battle of the Somme, where he was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous bravery. Hastings was warned about the possible reaction to the idea of a war hero being prosecuted for an article published in a small circulation newspaper. (9)

At a meeting on the morning of the 6th August, Hastings told MacDonald that he thought that "the whole matter could be dropped". MacDonald replied that prosecutions, once entered into, should not be dropped under political pressure". At a Cabinet meeting that evening Hastings revealed that he had a letter from Campbell confirming his temporary editorship. Hastings also added that the case should be withdrawn on the grounds that the article merely commented on the use of troops in industrial disputes. MacDonald agreed with this assessment and agreed the prosecution should be dropped. (10)

On 13th August, 1924, the case was withdrawn. This created a great deal of controversy and MacDonald was accused of being soft on communism. MacDonald, who had a long record of being a strong anti-communist, told King George V: "Nothing would have pleased me better than to have appeared in the witness box, when I might have said some things that might have added a month or two to the sentence." (11)

Soviet Union Trade Agreement

David Lloyd George signed a trade agreement with Russia in 1921, but never recognised the Soviet government. On taking office the Labour government entered into talks with Russian officials and eventually recognised the Soviet Union as the de jure government of Russia, in return for the promise that Britain would get payment of money that Tsar Nicholas II had borrowed when he had been in power. (12)

A conference was held in London to discuss these matters. Most newspapers reacted with hostility to these negotiations and warned of the danger of dealing with what they considered to be an "evil regime". in August 1924 a wide-ranging series of treaties was agreed between Britain and Russia. "The most-favoured-nation status was given to the Soviet Union in exchange for concessions to British holders of Czarist bonds, and Britain agreed to recommend a loan to the Soviet government." (13)

Stanley Baldwin, the leader of the Conservative Party, and H. H. Asquith, the leader of the Liberal Party, decided to being the Labour government down over the issue of its relationship with the Soviet Union. On 30th September, the Liberals condemned the recently agreed trade deal. They claimed, unjustly, that Britain had given the Russians what they wanted without resolving the claims of British bondholders who had suffered in the revolution. "MacDonald reacted peevishly to this, accusing them of being unscrupulous and dishonest." (14)

John Bernard Partridge, Punch Magazine (October, 1924) — John Bernard Partridge, *Punch Magazine* (October, 1924)

The following day, Conservatives put down a censure motion on the decision to drop the case against John Ross Campbell. The debate took place on 8th October. MacDonald lost the vote by 364 votes to 198. "Labour was brought down, on the Campbell case, by the combined ranks of Conservatives and Liberals... The Labour government had lasted 259 days. On six occasions the Conservatives had saved MacDonald from defeat in the 1923 parliament, but it was the Liberals who pulled the political rung from under him." (15)

Zinoviev Letter

As soon as the election was announced the plot against the Labour government was launched. On 10th October 1924, MI5 received a copy of a letter, dated 15th September, sent by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, to Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were asked to take all possible action to ensure the ratification of the Anglo-Soviet Treaties. It then went on to advocate preparation for military insurrection in working-class areas of Britain and for subverting the allegiance in the army and navy. (16)

Hugh Sinclair, head of MI6, provided "five very good reasons" why he believed the letter was genuine. However, one of these reasons, that the letter came "direct from an agent in Moscow for a long time in our service, and of proved reliability" was incorrect. (17) Vernon Kell, the head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson the head of Special Branch, also said they were also convinced that the letter was genuine. Desmond Morton, who worked for MI6, told Sir Eyre Crowe, at the Foreign Office, that an agent, Jim Finney, who worked for George Makgill, the head of the Industrial Intelligence Bureau (IIB), had penetrated Comintern and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Morton told Crowe that Finney "had reported that a recent meeting of the Party Central Committee had considered a letter from Moscow whose instructions corresponded to those in the Zinoviev letter". However, Christopher Andrew, MI5's official historian, who examined all the files concerning the matter, claims that Finney's report of the meeting does not include this information. (18)

Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret. (19) Thomas Marlowe, who worked for the press baron, Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, had a good relationship with Reginald Hall, the Conservative Party MP, for Liverpool West Derby. During the First World War Hall was director of Naval Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy (NID) and he leaked the letter to Marlowe, in an effort to bring an end to the Labour government. (20)

The newspaper now contacted the Foreign Office and asked if it was a forgery. Without reference to MacDonald, a senior official told Marlowe it was genuine. The newspaper also received a copy of the letter of protest sent by the British government to the Russian ambassador, denouncing it as a "flagrant breach of undertakings given by the Soviet Government in the course of the negotiations for the Anglo-Soviet Treaties". It was decided not to use this information until closer to the election. (21)

1924 General Election

The Daily Mail published the Zinoviev Letter on 25th October 1924, just four days before the 1924 General Election. Under the headline "Civil War Plot by Socialists Masters" it argued: "Moscow issues orders to the British Communists... the British Communists in turn give orders to the Socialist Government, which it tamely and humbly obeys... Now we can see why Mr MacDonald has done obeisance throughout the campaign to the Red Flag with its associations of murder and crime. He is a stalking horse for the Reds as Kerensky was... Everything is to be made ready for a great outbreak of the abominable class war which is civil war of the most savage kind." (22)

Dora Russell, whose husband, Bertrand Russell, was standing for the Labour Party in Chelsea, commented: "The Daily Mail carried the story of the Zinoviev letter. The whole thing was neatly timed to catch the Sunday papers and with polling day following hard on the weekend there was no chance of an effective rebuttal, unless some word came from MacDonald himself, and he was down in his constituency in Wales. Without hesitation I went on the platform and denounced the whole thing as a forgery, deliberately planted on, or by, the Foreign Office to discredit the Prime Minister." (23)

Ramsay MacDonald suggested he was a victim of a political conspiracy: "I am also informed that the Conservative Headquarters had been spreading abroad for some days that... a mine was going to be sprung under our feet, and that the name of Zinoviev was to be associated with mine. Another Guy Fawkes - a new Gunpowder Plot... The letter might have originated anywhere. The staff of the Foreign Office up to the end of the week thought it was authentic... I have not seen the evidence yet. All I say is this, that it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I avoid the suspicion - I will not say the conclusion - that the whole thing is a political plot?" (24)

Bob Stewart claimed that the letter included several mistakes that made it clear it was a forgery. This included saying that Grigory Zinoviev was not the President of the Presidium of the Communist International. It also described the organisation as the "Third Communist International" whereas it was always called "Third International". Stewart argued that these "were such infantile mistakes that even a cursory examination would have shown the document to be a blatant forgery." (25)

The rest of the Tory owned newspapers ran the story of what became known as the Zinoviev Letter over the next few days and it was no surprise when the election was a disaster for the Labour Party. The Conservatives won 412 seats and formed the next government. Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express and Evening Standard, told Lord Rothermere, the owner of The Daily Mail and The Times, that the "Red Letter" campaign had won the election for the Conservatives. Rothermere replied that it was probably worth a hundred seats. (26)

David Low was a Labour Party supporter who was appalled by the tactics used by the Tory press in the 1924 General Election: "Elections have never been completely free from chicanery, of course, but this one was exceptional. There were issues - unemployment, for instance, and trade. There were legitimate secondary issues - whether or not Russia should be afforded an export loan to stimulate trade. In the event these issues were distorted, pulped, and attached as appendix to a mysterious document subsequently held by many creditable persons to be a forgery, and the election was fought on 'red panic' (The Zinoviev Letter)". (27)

After the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter. It later became clear that Major George Joseph Ball, a MI5 officer, played an important role in leaking it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Christopher Andrew, MI5's official historian, points out: "Ball's subsequent lack of scruples in using intelligence for party political advantage while at Central Office in the late 1920s strongly suggests... that he was willing to do so during the election campaign of October 1924." (28)

Russian Subversion of Western Democracy

Nearly a 100 years later the political situation has completely changed. The Russian government is now a strong supporter of the Conservative Party. This is mainly because Vladimir Putin supports its policy of leaving the European Union. It is not only Donald Trump who is aware of the economic problems that this very large trading block has caused their respective countries. It has been claimed that Putin has used social media platforms to interfere in the EU Referendum, the 2016 Presidential Election and the 2017 General Election. Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, was asked to look into these claims about what happened in the United States and as the Wall Street Journal pointed out: "Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report is unambiguously clear on this point: Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and sought to help Donald Trump win the White House." (29)

The Mueller Report found that the Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and "violated U.S. criminal law". The report relayed two methods by which Russia attempted to influence the election. The first method of Russian interference was done through the Internet Research Agency (IRA), waging "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton". The IRA also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States".

The second method of Russian interference saw the Russian military intelligence agency GRU hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the media. (30)

As Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee in the US, has said: “From what we’ve seen, the parallels between the Russian intervention in Brexit and the Russian intervention in the Trump campaign appear to be extraordinary.... The Russians were apparently dangling gold mines and diamond mines and financial incentives behind one of the largest backers of Brexit." The person named ias the head of the conspiracy was Arron Banks "who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union." The New York Times reported that: "While Mr. Banks was spending more than eight million British pounds to promote a break with the European Union - an outcome the Russians eagerly hoped for - his contacts at the Russian Embassy in London were opening the door to at least three potentially lucrative investment opportunities in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines." (31)

In the debate on the Mueller Report, a Republican Congressman Devin Nunes showed a photo of Boris Johnson standing next to Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, who was accused of being a link between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. Nunes, a former lawyer, asked Mueller if Johnson could have been compromised by an alleged Russian spy. "What we are trying to figure out here, Mr Mueller, is if our Nato allies or Boris Johnson has been compromised." Mueller refused to be drawn on the speculation. (32)

Joseph Mifsud, Boris Johnson and Prasenjit Kumar Singh

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee decided to launch an investigation into the possibility of Russian interference into the EU Referendum and the 2017 General Election. Its Final Report was published on 18th February 2019. It showed concern that the government seemed uninterested in the results of their findings. The minister responsible, Jeremy Wright, commented: "We have seen nothing that persuades us that Russian interference has had a material impact on the way in which people choose to vote in elections. It is not that they have not tried, but we have not seen evidence of that material impact". The committee responded by arguing: "It is surely a sufficient matter of concern that the Government has acknowledged that interference has occurred, irrespective of the lack of evidence of impact. The Government should be conducting analysis to understand the extent of Russian targeting of voters during elections."

The committee pointed out: "There is, however, strong evidence that points to hostile state actors influencing democratic processes. Cardiff University and the Digital Forensics Lab of the Atlantic Council have both detailed ways in which the Kremlin attempted to influence attitudes in UK politics. Kremlin-aligned media published significant numbers of unique articles about the EU referendum. Researchers analysed the most shared of the articles, and identified 261 with a clear anti-EU bias to the reporting. The two main outlets were RT and Sputnik, with video produced by Ruptly. The articles that went most viral had the heaviest anti-EU bias. The social reach of these anti-EU articles published by the Kremlin-owned channels was 134 million potential impressions, in comparison with a total reach of just 33 million and 11 million potential impressions for all content shared from the Vote Leave website and Leave.EU website respectively. The value for a comparable paid social media campaign would be between £1.4 and 4.14 million. On 17 January 2019, Facebook removed 289 Pages and 75 accounts from its site, accounts that had about 790,000 followers and had spent around $135,000 on ads between October 2013 and January 2019. The sites had been run by employees at the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik, who represented themselves as independent news or general interest Pages." (33)

The committee drew attention to research carried out by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats at Cardiff University showed how ‘sock puppet’ Twitter accounts, controlled by the St Petersburg-based ‘Internet Research Agency’, tried to fuel social divisions, including religious tensions, in the aftermath of the Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks. (34) Furthermore, the methods through which malign influence can be deployed are also constantly being expanded. While Twitter has been responsive in shutting down abusive and fake accounts, Facebook remains reluctant to do so. Research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Institute of Global Affairs into the German 2017 elections discovered Facebook Groups created by unverifiable administrators, directing Russian state-backed media during the election period, with regularity, across social media. (35)

Intelligence and Security Committee Russian Report

Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee decided to look into the possibility of Russian interference in the EU Referendum and the 2017 General Election. The membership of the committee is as follows: Dominic Grieve (chairman), Richard Benyon (Conservative), Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party), Caroline Flint (Labour), David Hanson (Labour), Lord Janvrin, (former private secretary to the Queen), Kevan Jones (Labour), The Marquess of Lothian (former Conservative MP) and Keith Simpson (Conservative).

It's Russian Report was finished in March, 2019. By 17th October, the final draft of the report had been agreed by the intelligence and security agencies and the only remaining step was for the Prime Minister to approve publication. Lord Anderson, the man who was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in the United Kingdom between 2011 and 2017, asked why "the Prime Minister has not provided confirmation within the usual 10 days that the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament’s Special Report on Russia may be published, and whether that confirmation will be provided today so that the report can be laid before Parliament in advance of Dissolution." (36)

However, it soon became clear that Boris Johnson had no intention of publishing the report before the 2019 General Election. This decision had been condemned Dominic Grieve as well as "a phalanx of those with experience in this field including Lord Anderson of Ipswich and the PM’s former National Security Adviser, Lord Ricketts, asked why the Prime Minister was refusing to approve the release of a report that has apparently been cleared for publication by the intelligence and security agencies." (37)

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." (38)

One of the Russians named in the report is Alexander Lebedev, one of the golden 100 top Russian billionaires listed as the 39th richest Russian. It is claimed that he was based at the Russian embassy in London during the 1980s. (39) After leaving the KGB, Lebedev set up his first company, the Russian Investment-Finance Company. In 1995 this bought the National Reserve Bank. At the time it was only a small Russian bank but subsequently grew rapidly to become one of Russia's largest banks. The bank is the core of the group of companies holding National Reserve Corporation. In March 2012, Forbes Magazine estimated Lebedev's fortune as high as US$1.1 billion. (40)

On 21 January 2009, Lebedev and his son, Evgeny Lebedev, bought approximately a 75.1% of share in the Evening Standard newspaper for £1. (41) Lebedev promised to not interfere with the editorial running of the paper. But in March 2017, it was announced that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, was to become the editor of the newspaper, reinforcing the idea that it was a Conservative Party supporting newspaper. (42) On 25th March 2010, Lebedev bought The Independent and Independent on Sunday for £1. (43)

Information from the suppressed Intelligence and Security Committee Russian Report has been published in the United States. Nina dos Santos, published an interesting article on the CNN news website, about the report: "Russia's influence reaches deep into the British establishment and successive UK governments have turned a blind eye to it, lawmakers were warned, according to multiple sources familiar with testimony given to a parliamentary inquiry." It seems that "members of the cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) were told that Moscow built up a network of friendly British diplomats, lawyers, parliamentarians and other influencers from across the political spectrum. One witness described the development as 'potentially the most significant threat to the UK's institutions and its ways of life,' according to testimony seen by CNN." It goes on to suggest that the publication of the report "could raise awkward questions about the validity of the Brexit referendum in 2016 and expose the alleged Russian connections of some in the ruling Conservative party." (44)

Some of the witnesses who gave evidence to the ISC have spoken to CNN. This included Christopher Steele, who ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 2009. After leaving MI6 Steele co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based private intelligence firm. Steele authored a dossier that claims Russia collected a file of compromising information on President Donald Trump. In October 2016, Steele spoke about his discoveries to the journalist, David Corn, and the article appeared American political magazine Mother Jones. Steele said he decided to pass his dossier to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that the material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Trump, but was a matter of national security for both countries. (45)

The other person who spoke to CNN was Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which was at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. The Hermitage Fund was started in partnership with Republic National Bank, with $25 million in seed capital. The fund, and associated accounts, eventually grew to $4.5 billion of assets. In 1997, the Hermitage Fund was the best-performing fund in the world and was up by 238%. Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco. In retaliation, on 13th November, 2005, Browder was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security. (46)

During their investigations, the ISC were told that successive British governments had downplayed the threat. One witness said "political considerations seemed to outweigh national security interests." One witness told the committee that Russian agents were targeting research roles in the House of Commons, acquiring British citizenship to funnel cash to political parties and employing public relations firms to cleanse reputations. Browder alleged that Putin had used the proceeds of illegal asset seizures and money from corrupt sources to develop a "network" of well-connected, influential British figures, enabling the Kremlin "to infiltrate UK society and to conceal the underlying Russian controllers and their agendas."

In his written testimony to the ISC, Browder accused well-connected figures of involvement in an effort to help Russians who wanted to avoid being targeted by European Union sanctions. According to Browder's testimony, among those involved was Peter Goldsmith, who was attorney general in the Labour government of Tony Blair, and his firm Debevoise & Plimpton. That firm hired CTF Corporate and Financial Communications (CTFCFC), a public affairs outfit co-founded by Lynton Crosby, a polling expert who has worked on Conservative party election campaigns, including Johnson's 2008 London mayoral election campaign. (47)

The CNN article suggests that the ISC report raises important questions about the links between Moscow and the leadership of Boris Johnson's Conservative party, and suggested that his director of communications, Dominic Cummings, had questions to answer about a period he spent in Russia. After leaving Oxford University he moved to post-Soviet Russia where he attempted to make money from the fall of communism. However, he seemed to have upset the KGB with his activities and left the country in 1997. (48) According to one source the ISC report says that Cummings met Vladislav Surkov while in Moscow, who is known as the "grey cardinal" of the Kremlin and his close links to Russia's security agencies. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary has denied that No 10 was "in the grip of a Kremlin mole." (49)

Journalist and Russia expert Edward Lucas, who was among the first to contribute to the ISC inquiry in July 2018, told CNN his testimony to the committee centered on the role of lobbyists who were advocating in the UK on behalf of Russian clients with dubious sources of wealth. Lucas said British authorities should increase their cooperation with other countries to tackle Russian subversion. Other witnesses warned that Moscow was emboldened by British governments' failures to take a tougher stance after a former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, was fatally poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope in London in November 2006. (50)

James Cusick of Open Democracy has been talking to ISC members. He claims that one of the reasons why the report is unpublished is a dispute between Johnson and the intelligence services. Apparently, Johnson is demanding that specific names be removed from a report. "The request for the redactions of the ISC’s controversial Russia report is the latest in a series of attempts by Johnson’s government to prevent any evidence-based debate on Russia’s alleged covert influence on UK politics till the general election has been concluded next month.... The redactions are understood to have been ordered to protect London-based Russian oligarchs who are either leading donors to the Conservative Party or individuals regarded as friends of the prime minister, Boris Johnson. According to Whitehall sources close to the ISC, with detailed knowledge of how it operates, Number 10 or senior ministers can order the redaction of names only if publication is regarded a matter of national security." (51)

The largest recent Russian donor has been Lubov Chernukhin. In 2014 she donated £160,000 in return for a tennis match with David Cameron and Boris Johnson. In June she provided another £200,000. Lubov, is the wife of Russian oligarch Vladimir Chernukhin. He was Putin’s deputy finance minister in the 2000s and is now a British-based investor. Over the last few years Putin-friendly businessmen are among the Conservative Party's most reliable donors. (52) Although it is Russian money going into the Tory Party, Lubov can pay the money because, according to a Tory spokesman: "Ms Lubov Chernukhin has lived in Britain for many years and is a British citizen, which gives her the democratic right to donate to a political party." (53)

Another interesting supporter of the Conservative Party is Andrey Borodin, who has a fortune estimated at £1 billion. A former banker under Putin’s rule, he held a senior position with the Bank of Moscow when the future president was mayor of the city in 1996. He was subsequently named Russia’s banker of the year in 2001, when Putin was president. However, he fled to Britain after being accused of corruption. Soon after arriving in Britain he paid £140 million for Park Place in Henley-on-Thames. Borodin was granted asylum to live in the UK by David Cameron in 2013. (54) After this he was a regular at Tory fund-raising events. In 2013 at the Conservative Party summer party, "he and his wife sat with Boris Johnson, and a company registered to Borodin’s address paid £40,000 for a portrait of Margaret Thatcher." (55)

Alexander Knaster was born in Moscow in 1959. Knaster immigrated to the United States at the age of 16 with his family. After graduating in 1985 with an MBA from Harvard Business School and working at several investment banks, he returned to Russia in 1995 to work as CEO of the Russian branch of Credit Suisse First Boston. He was very successful and due to his background in investment banking, Knaster established Pamplona Capital Management in 2004, in which the Alfa Group would invest some of its profit. Knaster was granted British citizenship in 2009 although he lives in New York City and in return he donated more than £400,000 to the Tory Party. After ten years he managed $6.5 billion in assets of which $2.0 billion belongs to the Alfa Group. (56)

Another wealthy Russian who has been granted British citizenship is George Piskov. He made a fortune in the period following the collapse of communism. Piskov made billions from launching a money transfer service across his vast homeland. He formed a bank called Uniastrum, which became one of the fastest-growing businesses in Russia during these boom years, but ran into trouble during the global financial crash of 2007/08. "As well as attending Tory Party fundraisers, he has also made a £10,000 donation direct to party headquarters in 2012. You would expect this to have offered him access to influential policy-makers in Parliament here." (57)

Seth Thévoz and Peter Geoghegan have looked very closely at the Russians who have been financing the Conservative Party. They point out that Lubov Chernukhin has donated more than £450,000 to the Conservatives in the last year. Former arms tycoon Alexander Temerko is another prominent Russian donor in Tory circles who has given money in the past year. Temerko, who has spoken warmly about his "friend" Boris Johnson, has gifted over £1.2 million to the Conservatives over the past seven years and has reportedly admitted being involved in a Eurosceptic plot to oust Theresa May as Tory leader less than a year ago. (58)

In the 1990s Temerko held senior posts in the Russian Defence Ministry and, from 1999, he was a senior executive and director at the Russian oil and gas company Yukos. He became a UK citizen in 2011. He is a member of the advisory council of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a right-wing, free-market, think tank. In a recent newspaper interview he has denied being an agent working for the Russian government. He added that he had financed the Conservative Party because it was pro-business and he disagreed with Labour’s "nationalisation policy". Temerko is a Director and Vice Chairman of the Newcastle-based OGN Group, a provider of engineering and construction services in offshore oil and gas companies. Temerko also admitted that he helped remove May from office after she "purged" him from senior roles within the party. (59)

According to the Electoral Commission. The Conservatives have received more than £3.5 million from Russian funders since 2010. While donations slowed down during the reign of Theresa May, they have picked up again in recent months, since the election of Johnson. "Between November 2018 and October 2019, the Tories received at least £489,850 from Russian donors, compared to less than £350,000 in the previous year. In May, the Conservatives also received almost £20,000 from a lobbying company closely connected to both Russian interests and the upper echelons of the Tory party." Founded by former Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside, New Century Media was paid by the Kremlin to promote a “positive image” of Russia in the UK in 2013. "New Century Media, which has donated more than £177,000 to the Conservatives over the last decade, previously arranged for Vladimir Putin’s judo partner to meet then-prime minister David Cameron at a major Tory fundraising event in 2013. Burnside has also represented Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch close to Putin, who is wanted by the FBI on bribery charges." (60)

In the first week of the election campaign the Conservative Party raised more than £5.67m in large donations – defined as amounts of more than £7,500 – compared with £218,500 given to the Labour Party. Lubov Chernukhin has given £200,000 and "Alexander Temerko gave two donations to the Tories worth a total of £67,000. Earlier this week, the company submitted plans for a privately funded £1.1bn electricity link between the UK and France." A Labour spokesman said: "While the Conservative party is in the pockets of vested interests and the super-rich, we are proud that the Labour party is funded by hundreds of thousands of people donating what they can afford." (61)

Another prominent recent Tory donor is the Russian billionaire financier Lev Mikheev. The Moscow-born investment banker, who has donated £212,000 to the Tories since 2010, Lev Mikheev, an investment banker who moved to the US before pursuing a career in finance and setting up Salute Capital Management in 2009. Named after the USSR space station programme Salyut, focused on investing in stocks in Russia and Eastern Europe before Mikheev left the firm in 2012. He is now chair of the Mikheev Charitable Trust and director of a fund management company called Bernina Systematic. (62)

Andrew Malone has also been investigating Lev Mikheev. "Having spent part of his childhood in the U.S., he was well placed to tap into the new emerging markets oligarchs were keen to invest in. Now aged 51, he is a billionaire financier with offices in London and next door to the Kremlin in the Russian capital. He has homes in London, Moscow and the U.S. Much of his fortune came through a hedge fund called Salute Capital Management, named after the former Soviet Union’s space exploration programme Salyut, and he is reputed to have invested £1 billion a year on behalf of the new wave of wealthy clients to emerge under Putin’s rule." (63)

Another one who might be mention in the ISC report is former Russian diplomat, Sergei Nalobin, first secretary in the Russian Embassy’s political section. His father, Nikolai Nalobin was also a major figure in the FSB, the KGB's successor agency, rising to become deputy head of the FSB department investigating economic crime. According to Marina Litvinenko, widow of the murdered Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, Nikolai Nalobin was her late husband's boss. Before his assignment in London, Sergey Nalobin was employed as special adviser to Vladimir Titov, Russia's deputy foreign minister. Titov is also the son of a celebrated KGB general. (64)

Nalobin’s most controversial role was helping to establish the Conservative Friends of Russia. This group was launched in the Russian Embassy’s gardens in August 2012 by Nalobin and the Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. It was attended by senior Conservatives such as the then chair of the DCMS Committee, and soon-to-be Culture Minister, John Whittingdale, who was the group’s honorary vice president. Whittingdale was accompanied by an office aide, Carrie Symonds, who was promoted to special advisor when he moved into the Cabinet in 2015. (Symonds now resides in Number 10 with Boris Johnson). (65)

Matthew Elliott, destined to become the chief executive of the official Vote Leave campaign, was a founding member of Conservative Friends of Russia and visited the Moscow Duma as part of a delegation. In 2004, Elliott had founded the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a right wing pressure group advocating low taxes and minimal government, and he had worked his way up the political ladder to win one of the most coveted and responsible jobs of 2016. Nalobin wished Elliott well on his engagement and described Boris Johnson as "our good friend" in a now-deleted social media post. (66)

Nalobin first event was co-hosted with blogger Paul Staines. Subsequent attendees include alt-right commentator Milos Yiannopolous and the then MP Douglas Carswell. Staines along with Jag Singh co-founded MessageSpace, a digital advertising agency which operates an advertising network representing dozens of leading political websites. In 2012 it advised the successful Boris Johnson London mayoral campaign. Private Eye reported in June 2012 that MessageSpace was advising the Russian Embassy in London on using social media. (67)

In August 2015, Nalobin had his permission to stay in Britain suddenly revoked. The Home Office refused to renew the visas of four Russian diplomats, normally a rubber-stamping exercise, Nalobin among them. The timing was not a coincidence: a week earlier, the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko concluded he was "probably murdered on the personal orders of Putin". A FBI report also raised concerns about the relationship between Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko and Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee. (68)

A recent report revealed that 48 of the UK’s 151 billionaires - as per the 2019 Sunday Times Rich List - have donated a combined total of more than £50m to the Tories over the past 14 years. At the same time as the Tories have handed out almost £100bn to the mega-wealthy in tax giveaways. The 48 billionaire Tory donors are reported to have a staggering combined wealth of more than £154,400,000,000 – and 10 of them have donated money to the party since Boris Johnson announced his bid to lead the party in May." (69)

It is clear why this happens, as Aneurin Bevan pointed out this is a major aspect of British General Elections: "How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century." Maybe for Russians, such as Alexander Lebedev, Evgeny Lebedev, Vladislav Surkov, Alexander Yakovenko, Lubov Chernukhin, Vladimir Chernukhin, Andrey Borodin, Alexander Knaster, George Piskov, Alexander Temerko, Lev Mikheev and Sergei Nalobin, their motives are more complicated. If the Intelligence and Security Committee Russian Report can help to explain their support for the Conservative Party, it should be published before the December, 2019 election.