Ricin secret police: Georgi Markov had defected from Bulgaria some years previously and had subsequently written books and made radio broadcasts that were highly critical of the Bulgarian communist regime. However, it was believed at the time that Bulgaria would not have been able to produce the pellet, and it was also believed that the KGB had supplied it. The KGB denied any involvement, although high-profile KGB defectors Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky have since confirmed the KGB's involvement. Earlier, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also suffered (but survived) ricin-like symptoms after an encounter in 1971 with KGB agents. Ten days before
When the War Was On with "Everybody Help the Boys Come Home" (1927) by William and Versey Smith, husband and wife. The other side of that record by the Smiths is "When That Great Ship Went Down", which relates to the sinking of RMS "Titanic". Johnson recorded his only other song on a temporal subject, "God Moves on the Water" (about the "Titanic" disaster), on the same day as he recorded "When the War Was On". It therefore seems likely that he knew that record. When the War Was On "When the War Was On" is a call and response blues song recorded in 1929