"Hippie" Used in Print / Igor Gouzenko defected to Canada - September 5

"Hippie" was first used in print with its current meaning on this day in 1965. / On this day in 1945, Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected to Canada.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all. Were we running two episodes today, which means
that you'll hear two hosts me and Tracy V. Wilson.
Enjoy the show. Welcome to this Day in History Class
from how Stuff Works dot com and from the desk
of Stuff you Missed in History Class. It's the show
where we explore the past, one day at a time
with a quick look at what happened today in history. Hello,

(00:24):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and
it's September five. The word hippies, as we usually use
it today, was used in writing for the first time
on this day in NINETI so hippies. I'm using that
to mean part of the subculture that started in the
nineteen sixties peaked in the nineteen seventies, associated with things

(00:45):
like long hair, beads, psychedelic colors, black lights, expanding one's
consciousness through drug use, and events like the Summer of
Love and Woodstock. The word hippies to mean people who
were part of this movement first appeared in a series
by Michael Fallon that ran in the San Francisco Examiner.

(01:06):
This first installment was about the Blue Unicorn Coffee House
in San Francisco. It ran under the headline a New
Paradise for beat Nix, and the first sentence began five
untroubled young hippies sprawled on floor, mattresses and slouched in
an armchair, retrieved from a debris box. The word hippies
in that sentence was in quotes. Of course, people were

(01:28):
saying hippies to mean this before it was ever written
down in this way. The word comes from the words
hip or hip, which people started using around nineteen o
three and nineteen o four. Hip h i P and
hep h g P have morphed meanings over the years,
meaning fashionable and in the no and then morphing into

(01:50):
the word a hepcat, which combined those earlier meanings to
mean somebody who was knowledgeable and fashionable and into jazz music.
And then hips her took on a similar meaning to
hip and hep and hepct and of course now means
something totally different today. At first, the word hippie sort

(02:11):
of meant fake hipster, and then when that Michael Fallon
article came along, he was using hippie as a synonym
for beat nick. Beat Nick was the name used for
people who were part of the Beat Generation and followers
of the Beat Generation. It also got its first use
in writing in a newspaper that was a column in
the San Francisco Chronicle on April Second Night. The Beat

(02:33):
Generation was a Bohemian social and literary movement. It combined
poetry and other writing with zen, Buddhism, and jazz and
the idea of breaking out of traditional literary structures and
social expectations. The Beat Generation is considered to be sort
of one step before the Hippies. Basically the hippies precursor

(02:55):
and Norman Mailer had used the word hipster to describe
the Beat Generation as well, So hip, hippie and hipster
are just such great examples of how one words meaning
can really morph so much over just a few decades. Today,
the word hippie is often associated with anti war activism

(03:16):
and looking back on the movement against the Vietnam War,
but at the time people who were described as hippies
often weren't thought of as being politically active. Some aspects
of that counterculture movement that spawned the world hippie in
the nineteen sixties, though, are still associated with the term today.
So even if you don't think of hippies as being

(03:37):
connected to woodstock and psychedelic colors and drug use. You
might think of people you would describe as hippies as
pacifists or into vegetarianism, or into organic food and holistic medicine.
Those were also part of the same counterculture movement. So
sometimes if you're describing your friend who likes to go

(03:57):
to the health food store and pick out a bunch
of organ vegetables to make a vegan entree for everyone
as a hippie, it's connected to that earlier movement, but
a slightly different flavor from how the word was used
back in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Thanks so much
to Christopher Hasciotis for his research work on today's episode,
and thanks to Tari Harrison for her audio work on

(04:20):
this show. You can subscribe to This Day in History
Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and where else to
get your podcasts, and you can tune in tomorrow for
a massacre. Hi, I'm Eves and welcome to This Day

(04:42):
in History Class, a show that uncovers history one day
at a time. The day was September. Soviet cipher clerk
Igor Guzenka left the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Ontario, carrying

(05:07):
more than a hundred secret documents. During World War Two,
Canada and the Soviet Union became allies. Ottawa was an
important site for the g r U, which was the
main intelligence directorate of the U S s RS General Staff.
Kuzenka was an intelligence officer working at the g r

(05:27):
U headquarters in Moscow. In nineteen forty three, he was
sent to Ottawa. His official title was civilian employee of
the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, but he was actually a
cipher clerk on the staff of the military attach a,
Colonel Nikolai Zeboten. It was Guzenka's job to deal with

(05:47):
transmissions to and from Moscow. His wife, spent Lana, moved
to Canada with him a few months after he arrived
in Ottawa. Guzenka was impressed with life in Ottawa, where
he found that his quality of life was better than
it was in the Soviet Union. In Canada, there were

(06:07):
democratic elections, freedom of speech, and better living conditions in
comparison life under Soviet rule and conditions at the Soviet
embassy were oppressive. Guzenka also found out that the g
r U and the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which
also led intelligence activities, were using the embassy as a

(06:29):
headquarters from which they conducted espionage activities against Canada. The
Boten had been ordered to keep his firings secret from
the Soviet ambassador, Georgi the Ubin. The Soviet Union was
not simply an ally of Canada. In nineteen forty four,
the boat In unexpectedly told Gluzenka that he and his

(06:50):
wife and his son were being sent back to Moscow.
He had his departure delayed, but he knew that the
reasons for his dismissal could not be good, and he
feared the situation he may returned to in Moscow. Disenchanted
with the Soviet Union and attracted to life in Canada,
Gauzenka began planning his defection. He copied or took documents

(07:14):
that he believed Canadian officials would be interested in. On
September he left the embassy carrying telegrams sent to and
received from Moscow and many other documents. That day and
the next he took his documents and story of Soviet
espionage to the Minister of Justice, the Ottawa Journal, and

(07:37):
the Ottawa Magistrate's Court. But they turned him away. On
the night of September six, he and his family hid
in the neighbor's apartment while Soviet agents raided his home.
Another neighbor called the Ottawa Police, who confronted the Soviet
agents and got them to leave with the help of

(07:57):
Norman Robertson, who was the Secretary of State for the
Department of External Affairs. Guzenka was taken to the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police headquarters the next morning for questioning. Guzenka
gave the RCMP documents detailing the Soviets espionage efforts in
Canadian government departments and in Western atomic research projects. Prime

(08:22):
Minister Mackenzie King was initially hesitant and unsure of Guzenka's motives,
but just two days after he defected, Guzenka and his
family were given political asylum and put in protective custody,
where they continued to be questioned. Guzenka's documents revealed that
there was a large scale system of Soviet espionage through

(08:45):
which the Soviets provided Moscow with classified information. News of
the Guzenka affair, as it became known, went public in
early February nineteen. A Royal commission was called to investigate
the accusations, which led to the arrest of thirty nine suspects.
Eighteen of those people were convicted, so Bowen was sent

(09:08):
to a labor camp in Siberia. The Soviet government admitted
that it obtained certain secret information from Canadians, but said
that the information was useless. The Gouzenka affair encouraged distrust
of the Soviet Union and inspired anti communist sentiment in
the West. The affair has been credited as an inciting

(09:30):
incident of the Cold Ore. Gouzenka lived under police protection
with his family and Canada for the rest of his life.
I'm Eves Jeff Code, and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If there
are any upcoming days in history that you'd really like
me to cover on the show, give us a shout

(09:51):
on social media at t D I HC podcast. Thanks
for joining me on this trip through history. See you here,
same place tomorrow. MM. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

(10:12):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.