Catalogue description Harry Peter SMOLLETT, alias SMOLKA: Austrian, British. SMOLKA arrived in Britain in 1930...

Harry Peter SMOLLETT, alias SMOLKA: Austrian, British. SMOLKA arrived in Britain in 1930 to work as a journalist. Reports suggesting he was a spy in the pay of Italy were investigated without result. In 1934 he told the Home Office he intended to establish a news agency with H A R 'Kim' PHILBY, though he later claimed the proposal came to nothing. During the war he worked in the Foreign Publicity Division of the Ministry of Information as head of its Soviet Relations Division. At this time his pro-Soviet sympathies were on record. After the war SMOLKA was the Vienna correspondent for the Daily Express and the Times. In 1952 when he was living in the Russian sector of Vienna he was reported locally to be a fanatical communist. Reports of his written during the war were found that year among personal belongings left behind by Guy BURGESS. As a consequence SMOLKA was assessed to have been implicated in Soviet espionage between (at least) 1930 and 1945