Russell Smith

Russell Smith.

Russell Smith was the private secretary of Kramer Associates President Diego Cortez y Catalán in the late 1890s. On 7 November 1897, Cortez sent Smith to meet with the Governor of California, Alberto Puente, to formulate a plan to provoke a war between the United States of Mexico and the Russian Empire. Over the next week, the two men worked out a plan to bribe a Russian army officer to briefly send troops over the border into California. Cortez would then make use of an agent within the Mexican State Department to increase tensions between the two nations, after which Puente would provoke a Russian invasion of California, then appeal to Chief of State Benito Hermión for military assistance against the Russians. Cortez and Puente put their plan into effect the following spring.

---

Sobel's source for Russell Smith's role in fomenting the Great Northern War is Andrew Stirling's The Secret History of the Great Northern War (London, 1923).