He was rather more than that - world traveller, prospected for gold in South America, and a lot of other stuff, some of which comes into later books.
I suspect that the Russia connection came from the fact that Arthur Ransome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ransome), the author of the books, who obviously modeled Uncle Jim/Captain Flint on himself, was a correspondent for one of the British papers in Russia during the revolution, and, in fact, his second wife had been Leon Trotsky's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky) secretary.
Ransome did do some espionage work for the British government. QUoting the Wikipedia article:
Ransome provided some information to British officials and the British MI5, which gave him the code name S.76 in their files. Bruce Lockhart said in his memoirs: "Ransome was a Don Quixote with a walrus moustache, a sentimentalist who could always be relied upon to champion the underdog, and a visionary whose imagination had been fired by the revolution. He was on excellent terms with the Bolsheviks and frequently brought us information of the greatest value." In October 1919 Ransome met Rex Leeper of the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Department, who threatened to reveal this unless Ransome privately submitted his articles and public speaking engagements for approval. Ransome's response was "indignant". MI5, the British Security Service, was suspicious that Ransome and his fellow journalist M. Philips Price were a threat because of their opposition to the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War. On one of his visits to the United Kingdom, the authorities searched and interviewed him and threatened him with arrest.
In October 1919, as Ransome was returning to Moscow on behalf of The Manchester Guardian, the Estonian foreign minister Ants Piip entrusted him to deliver a secret armistice proposal to the Bolsheviks. At that time the Estonians were fighting their War of Independence alongside the White movement of counter-revolutionary forces. After crossing the battle lines on foot, Ransome passed the message, which to preserve secrecy had not been written down and depended for its authority only on the high personal regard in which he was held in both countries, to diplomat Maxim Litvinov in Moscow. To deliver the reply, which accepted Piip's conditions for peace, Ransome had to return by the same risky means, but this time he had Evgenia with him. Estonia withdrew from the conflict and Ransome and Evgenia set up home together in the capital Reval (Tallinn).
So, yes, there is an espionage/Russia connection - but in real life, not in the book.
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