bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, pp. 17–18
HOW THE COLD WAR BEGAN: THE
GOUZENKO AFFAIR AND THE HUNT
FOR SOVIET SPIES, by Amy Knight,
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005,
368 pp, $36.99.
Through diligent research, assisted by greater access to archival material than was possible until recently, Amy Knight has brought to bear her great expertise on Soviet history to produce one of the finest books on the Gouzenko Affair, which she rightly terms the beginning of the Cold War.
Knight’s excellent analysis and detailed re-evaluation and interpretation of all available data has resulted in a well-crafted and masterful piece of research which stands both as an academic treatise and as a good read, revealing a complex mystery and throwing new light on a fascinating page of Cold War and Canadian history.
In writing the story of the Gouzenko Affair, Knight rightly raises several disturbing questions which have been largely glossed over in previous histories of the Gouzenko defection. Were those accused really spies or just persons sympathetic to the Russians? Was there any damage done? Did the Gouzenko defection and resulting revelations polarize Western society? Most importantly, did the abuses of civil and firmly entrenched legal rights by the Canadian government, including the performance of two Supreme Court Justices who seemed to have shelved much of their legal training in pursuit of spies by fair means or foul, ultimately carry a cost for Canadian society?
In the view of this reviewer, the individuals who were convicted were indeed guilty of espionage even if the information they provided to the Russians does not, in retrospect, seem overly significant. That is the nature of spying. The information collected forms building blocks in a mosaic of knowledge where the individual pieces are rarely earth-shattering but collectively can divulge significant insights. More problematic is the question of whether most of the accused would have been convicted IF they had been accorded the rights of accused persons which existed. in the 1940s, let alone today. The refusal by the Commissioners, both Supreme Court Justices, to grant access to legal representation by the accused, throws a dark shadow on the history of Canadian civil rights.
There is little doubt that those accused of membership in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) spy ring helped the Soviet Union through acts which did constitute espionage. But as the complex revelations following the 9/11 attacks suggest, it is dangerous for our type of society to start breaking the rules in pursuit of the “bad guys.” The ultimate difference between us and non-democratic societies is that we play by the rules. When we stop doing that, we begin a dangerous downward slide. That happened briefly in the late 1940s. It continued in the United States during the 1950s during the McCarthy hearings. Nevertheless, it should be recalled that Canada did not succumb to the extreme anti-communist measures adopted in the United States.
Knight captures much of the fear and the abuses which arose from the Gouzenko defection. Perhaps Mackenzie King was more astute than he has been thought when his first instinct was to bury the Gouzenko defection, and not to permit it to disrupt the cordial relations which had been established during the wartime alliance between Canada and the Soviet Union. The Gouzenko revelations changed the world. However, it must be asked whether it was the act of defecting by Gouzenko which caused these changes or whether he was merely symptomatic of changes which were bound to occur in any event.
While Knight has produced a highly readable and well researched book, she acknowledges that, “There are other puzzles about the defection story that remain unsolved” (p. 40). The possibility of prior contact between Gouzenko and British or Canadian intelligence officials is also raised and is seen by Knight as explaining why Norman Robertson, Under- Secretary of State for External Affairs and nominal head of foreign intelligence activities carried out by Canada, “knew details about Gouzenko’s evidence as early as the morning of September 6” (p. 41), the morning after Gouzenko left the Soviet Embassy for the last time.
One will probably never know with certainty if there is more to the Gouzenko story than has been told by Amy Knight. If there are more secret files, they are likely to remain classified for a long time, if not forever. Certainly, Gouzenko never gave any indications during his life in Canada, when he seemed readily accessible to many journalists, that he was aware of other elements of the story which had not been revealed. As Knight sadly points out, Gouzenko and money always quickly parted company, and any media angle which Gouzenko might have used to sell a story would almost certainly have been used.
By making use of Russian material relating to the Gouzenko story, Knight adds new and revealing dimensions. One of the most interesting of these is the revelation that Stalin did not order Gouzenko’s assassination — although Gouzenko was sentenced to death by the Soviet government AFTER Stalin died. For Canadians who lived during the 1950s, Gouzenko will forever be remembered as the man who never appeared in public without a hood to mask his identity for fear of being marked for death by Soviet assassins.
One of the sadder revelations in Knight’s book is the cover name under which the Gouzenkos lived in Canada, masquerading as Czech immigrants. The name given to them was Krysac. The name is also the Czech word krysac, for rat. The Russian word for rat is krysa, and Gouzenko is not likely to have missed the slur. The name may have been the idea of John Leopold, a Czech-born RCMP security service officer whom Gouzenko earlier named as being a Soviet spy.
Knight records superbly Canada’s missed opportunity in not making greater use of Gouzenko to further our understanding of the Soviet Union. After the spy trials, the RCMP (who were responsible for him in Canada) seemed not to know what to do with him. He was pushed towards menial and unrewarding employment rather than utilized as a walking data bank on the Soviet Union. He was not the first defector ever and it was a missed Canadian opportunity not to use Gouzenko better, in the way that subsequent defectors to the West are often used.
Knight’s book on Gouzenko is strongly recommended as something worth reading because it expands on the public knowledge of an important piece of Canadian history. As important, Knight raises weighty considerations of what it means to be a democracy with entrenched processes for protecting the rights of individuals, even when our base instinct is to declare them guilty. In today’s world, where we are confronting a new asymmetrical threat, this is a pivotal matter which should not be forgotten.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, pp. 17–18. Read the rest of this issue →
