Stalin was a very sharp and far thinking and creative thinking strategist, maybe a chess player too:
Way in the young days of USSR he realized that Armand Hammer was to be nurtured as the best contact man in the USA, better than a US or USSR ambassador, or a friendship society.
Years ago I told you about the Vassiliev's Notes. He used the free access to the KGB archives suddenly opened to the public, on the condition that one could look at it and copy it only in handwriting into own notebooks, and only under the supervision of an archive worker.
His notes became extremely valuable because they were confirmed, or concurred with US VENONA and other intelligence products.
Armand Hammer, another products of Odessa, was a very enterprising young businessman who wanted to do business with Lenin even before he USSR was created. Armand became good friends with Lenin, and was the only person in the world who got personal gifts from the leader. The success resulted in pencil (bureaucracy, education) and asbestos (gloves, stoves, steam locomotives) concessions in the nascent USSR.
Some of the concessions' American citizen employees disappeared in USSR, it's very hard to account for their fate. Armand Hammer did not care about them.
After Lenin died, Stalin took over the government, and saw a gold mine of opportunity in Hammer. He formulated an idea well-recorded by the underlings:
Armand Hammer is a conservative American, an ambitious businessman, a capitalist, who loves USSR, is the only human being in the world personally accepted by Lenin, who had shaken his hand, hugged him, became his close friend; started to lobby USA government to recognize USSR, helped Communists to their business in USA, protected them. He will help USSR, to cause problems if not subvert American government, and the country. This man should be groomed, protected, and coddled as long as he lives.
In the 70's Armand Hammer did cause problems for the government and the uS president. His illegal contributions to Nixon's election campaign, perfectly motivated as a pure motivation from the Republican supporter, caused a sub-scandal that that was a part of the later Watergate scandal, also involving a Montana governor, and Armand's Occidental petroleum. All reminiscent of the events of the Trump's presidency.
In both presidencies one could see the a modus operandi, or an obvious coincidental, or not so coincidental circumstantial evidence of the Stalin's use of a billionaire to stir problems in USA.
In the early 80's, high level strategists in the KGB and Politburo noticed that Armand Hammer's phenomenal mind started to show signs of decay. They explicitly started a project to find another conservative, republican billionaire who would replace Hammer.
Yuri Shvets, another product of Ukraine, and the best student of the KGB colleges and later the most professional KGB officer, is known as having been the USSR's embassy top spokesman, KGB man, operations man, etc. When KGB and USSR died, he was unemployed, and simply moved to USA, where he was quickly snapped up and employed by the intel community. Only months ago he felt free to start his own Youtube channel, where he confirmed the KGB following the Stalin's dictum.
From all the American functionaries who visited USSR, not even the Ed Kennedy and his naive overture of asking the KGB to help stop Reagan, the only prospect who inspired hope was Trump. Trump, interested in franchising or branding his name, wanted to give his name to a hotel in USSR, and sure enough, this was jumped on by the USSR and he was warm heartedly invited there by the USSR. Yuri Shvets, the ultimate key operative in the USSR embassy, later confirmed the KGB's agenda (In Russian, Youtube).
But somehow, Trump's connections did not help Russia or Putin. According to Shvets, the inept new generation of Russian intel community could not handle the American opposition, and only succeeded in electronic muddling or meddling in US elections.
