article: Espionage - the stealing of secrets - is a well-trodden path for both sides, but far more sensitive is the notion of subversion, trying to influence political life by sowing dissent and supporting opposition. Both Russia and the West claim the other has been practising subversion for at least a century. Russian subversion is the talk of Washington at the moment, but Moscow has its own narrative. It begins 100 years ago, when Britain was determined to roll back the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Enter a colourful array of characters linked to MI6, notably Sir Paul Dukes and Sidney Reilly ("Ace of Spies"). But it is the Lockhart Plot which is particularly remembered in Russia - although barely known in Britain. Named after British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart, who was stationed in Moscow, it involved paying Latvian soldiers to launch a counter-coup. "The shadow of these events still hangs over our relations," says Prof Evgeny Sergeev, from the Russian State University for Humanities. "It was used by Soviet propaganda as the symbol of all those evil intentions to overthrow the Bolshevik government." The Bolshevik government's reaction was to strengthen its secret police to protect against outside interference and to send its spies abroad to discern the plans of others. Back in Britain during the 1920s, the government feared worldwide Bolshevik revolution. Concerns centred on The All Russian Trade Co-operative Society (Arcos) in London. Britain's intelligence services were convinced it was not only a nest of spies but the epicentre of subversive activity - spreading propaganda and supporting strikes, amid fears that "Moscow gold" was supporting "terrorist groups" in the British Empire. A message from the Communist International known as the Zinoviev letter helped fuel that idea - even though it was fake. Arcos was closed in a chaotic raid, but it was not long before Soviet intelligence pulled off one of its greatest coups - recruiting a group of Cambridge graduates who would work their way into the heart of the British establishment. Britain also seems to have had its own plans. In 1937, Fitzroy Maclean took up a diplomatic posting in Moscow, witnessing the show trials in which Stalin purged his opponents and travelling widely across the Soviet Union. This gave him an idea which he wrote up on his return to the Foreign Office in 1939. Oddly, his memo - originally marked Top Secret - has appeared and disappeared from the British archives in recent years. But Moscow had known about the content for decades. I learned this from Todor Boyadjiev, a retired deputy head of Bulgarian intelligence, who says Russian colleagues showed him the memo and further plans based on it. Boyadjiev says MI6 developed a plan codenamed Lyautey, named after a French general. The story goes that the general asked his gardener to plant some trees to provide shade. The gardener protested they would take decades to grow, to which the General replied there was no time to lose. Britain's Lyautey plan, Boyadjiev says, was a long-term effort to fragment the Soviet Union by stirring up unrest among religious
summary: The claim that the Kremlin sought to influence America's presidential election is only the latest chapter in a much longer story of mistrust between Russia and the West.