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One aspect of @Dannythefink’s article on the Corbyn foreword to Hobson doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention.
Usual disclaimer: I haven’t read the foreword itself (I’m not sure a full version is on the internet) and there are always dangers in relying on quoted extracts.
But - subject to that caveat - these passages are quite striking. 
The view that the US operated through the CIA and pliant governments, while the Soviet Union was “always different” would have surprised anyone living in the GDR, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia ... between ~1947 and 1989. Not to mention the outright conquest of the Baltic States
The claim that (in contrast to US allies) the Soviet Union’s allies often operated independently is also an odd take on the suppression of the Prague Spring, or Hungary in 1956.
The Soviet Union is now history. But people’s judgments of it and its behaviour are, I think, still relevant when they are seeking high office.
PS @ejhchess sent me this link to the full foreword. spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/…
The passages I’m referring to are here (and I think I’ve included enough to give context).
I suspect, FWIW, that Corbyn’s claim that “the Soviet influence was always different [from malign CIA influence/creation of pliant governments], and its allies often operated quite differently” May come from his focus on Latin America (Cuba is given as the example).
I simply don’t know enough to comment on the accuracy of that view of Soviet influence in the case of Latin America.
But given that the view is expressed as a general statement about Soviet conduct throughout the world, it is at least odd that it isn’t qualified by reference to Soviet conduct in Central/Eastern Europe between WWII and 1989.
