Sean Connery, the most popular cinematic James Bond, has died at 90. The charming and sexy Connery brought to life for many the character Ian Fleming created in the Bond novels and made the Bond films immensely popular, to the great regret of the then-powerful communist bloc.
In an article entitled Ian Fleming’s Coldest Warrior: The Anti-Communist Origins of James iBond, the Victims of Communism blog relates the story of how James Bond creator Ian Fleming was inspired by personal experience to fight communism.
“In 1933, a 25-year-old Fleming was given the assignment by Reuters to cover one of Stalin’s most internationally known show trials involving six British engineers accused of spying and sabotage by the USSR.” The engineers were publicly humiliated and intimidated for days, and finally forced to sign false confessions. “What Fleming saw, he never forgot, and the influence of the sham Soviet judicial system is found throughout the life of his literary creation, James Bond…Although Fleming mostly used the Stalin-controlled Soviet military counterintelligence agency SMERSH as his frontline enemy, his goal was always the destruction of the communist machine.”
Fleming’s efforts were not without effect. In an article entitled How Pop Culture Helped Win the Cold War, historian Dominic Sandbrook argued that “James Bond had a bigger role in winning the cold war than you might think.” And Sean Connery helped make that happen. RIP.