Igor+Gouzenko

= Igor Gouzenko=



Igor Gouzenko was a cipher clerk who worked for the Soviet Union. He worked in the Ottawa office for the //Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje// (GRU), which was the Soviet Union's largest foreign intelligence agency. As a cipher clerk in 1943, he deciphered messages for the GRU. His involvement in the GRU gave him knowledge of Soviet espionage activities in the West, primarily Canada. On September 5th, 1946 Gouzenko defected from the Soviet Union to Canada. He walked out of the Soviet Embassy with 109 top-secret documents in a briefcase. These documents were evidence that there was a massive spy ring inside Canada. Gouzenko went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but nobody there believed his story. Next, he went to the Ottawa Journal newspaper, but once again the night editor was not interested. By then, it was night time and he was afraid that the Soviets had discovered his defection. Gouzenko went back to his apartment, but a Soviet agent was spotted in an alleyway nearby. He then went to his next door neighbour and hid there with his wife and children. The Canadian authorities finally checked out his allegation and Gouzenko and his family were granted political asylum and Gouzenko was transported to Camp X by the RCMP. Camp X was a secret training facility located near Whitby, Ontario for Allied undercover personnel in World War II. It was decommissioned by the time Gouzenko arrived at Camp X. He was interviewed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation and the British MI5. Despite the fact the RCMP were interested in the investigation, Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King wanted nothing to do with him. He was afraid that an investigation into Gouzenko would lead to upsetting the Soviet Union, who was still a wartime ally. Eventually he was convinced by Norman Robertson, his Undersecretary for External Affairs that Gouzenko's case should be looked into.



Gouzenko's defection was extremely important in the evolving of the Canadian's mind. Gouzenko showed Canadians that although World War II was over, yet another war was looming, even if it was a different type of war. He was important in the revealing of the Soviet Union's communist dictator,Joseph Stalin's effort to steal nuclear secret. The documents led to the arrest of 39 suspects in Canada alone. Eventually 18 were convicted, including Sam Carr, the Communist Party's national organizer, and Fred Rose, the only Communist Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons. Gouzenko's defection also leaded to the prosecution of German communist physicist, Klaus Fuchs, who stole atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. The Soviet documents not only led to prosecutions in Canada, but also the United States and Britain. They led to the arrests of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the United States, and the arrests of the infamous Cambridge Five and Alan Nunn May. Also, Stalin invented the technique of planting sleeper agents in opposing countries. In many cases, the "Gouzenko Affair" is said to be the trigging event for the war between the Soviet Union and its satellites and the powers of the Western world who were under the leadership of the United States. The term "Cold War" applied to the two opposing forces trying to defeat each other without any actual military means. War would be fought out by espionage and propaganda, instead of weapons.