Gouzenko papers show beginning of the Cold War
Tense tale of defector in new CSIS documents
It was 1945 in Ottawa and a young Soviet embassy employee had just walked out with secret papers revealing his country’s espionage secrets. Now a man was knocking on his apartment door on Somerset Street West.
Igor Gouzenko waited breathlessly inside with his wife, Svetlana, and their baby son. They didn’t answer the door, and when their visitor called out, they recognized the voice of a chauffeur working for the military attaché.
After a few minutes, the chauffeur left.
The Gouzenkos made a quick decision that it wasn’t safe to stay, and went to a neighbour’s apartment.
Gouzenko tells the story in a handwritten statement, part of a long set of documents released this week by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. The documents offer a fresh glimpse of an espionage saga that, with Gouzenko’s defection, dragged the brewing Cold War between East and West into the public spotlight for many Canadians.
“Leaving our appartment (sic) by the back door on the balcony I climbed over to the balcony of our neighbour, who was at that time on the balcony with his wife and child. My neighbour was a military man; I did not know him well previously.
“I told him briefly what was the matter and asked if we could leave the child with him for the night. He agreed with readiness.” The neighbour even rode off on his bicycle and told the Ottawa police, who sent an officer to wait outside just in case.
Igor and Svetlana Gouzenko stayed that night with the woman across the hall — until a car drove up at midnight and four men got out.
They turned the bathroom light off as a signal to the policeman outside, but he had gone for lunch.
Gouzenko’s statement picks up the story:
“My wife, who was looking through the keyhole, saw how Pavlov, Rogov, Angelov and Farafontov broke the lock of our appartment (sic) looking about them fearfully the while.”
The four men went in to search the apartment, until the policeman came back and discovered four Russians hiding behind the furniture.
Clearly the police training of 1945 didn’t deal with midnight spies. The officer took the men’s names, and then told them: “I don’t know what to do with you.” Pavlov answered: “Let us go and that is all.”
Gouzenko concludes: “Finally the policeman allowed them to go. The policeman stayed on duty with us (afterwards).”
Next, an Ottawa police inspector showed up, and decided the RCMP should be told as well.
At 4 a.m., there was one more knock at the door — Gorshkov the chauffeur again, who this time found the police waiting. They let him go, too.
Hours later, Gouzenko was making a statement to two senior Mounties. The world had not yet coined the term Cold War, but it was coming thanks to his documents.
Gouzenko, then in his 20s, was a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa with access to all of the secret paperwork. In defecting, he brought stunned Canadian authorities piles of documents proving the Soviets were spying on Canada, the U.S. and Britain on a huge scale — and that they were after nuclear secrets.
Gouzenko even went public, taking his story to the Ottawa Journal — which sent him packing. (The Ottawa Citizen later ran the story.)
It was astonishing stuff to a nation that thought the Soviets were allies against Germany.
Here’s more vintage Gouzenko released now by CSIS:
“Holding forth international conferences with voluble statements about peace and security the Soviet Government is simultaneously preparing for the third world war. To make this war the Soviet Government is creating in democratic countries, including Canada, a fifth column, in the organization of which even diplomatic representatives of the Soviet government take part.”
He says the USSR “has never relinquished the idea of establishing a communist dictatorship throughout the world.”
Gouzenko signed the statement in October 1945 and disappeared for a while. The documents show how Mounties searched for the little family in Souris, in all the hotels in Fredericton, in Vancouver, and all over. No Gouzenkos. (Pavlov kept paying their rent, while a company called Sun Realty warned the Mounties not to damage the apartment at 511 Somerset.)
He eventually took on a new identity — George Brown — and a life in what is now Mississauga.
He died there in 1982 after years of bitter wrangling with the RCMP.
Within days of his defection, the RCMP’s log of Telex messages was quickly growing, a lot of them from someone named Hoover at the FBI, all dealing with surveillance and arrests.
Igor Gouzenko had kicked a hornet’s nest.