Igor Gouzenko defected to Canada - September 5, 1945

On this day in 1945, Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected to Canada. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves and Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that uncovers history one day
at a time. Today is September. The day was September nine.

(00:29):
Soviet cipher clerk Igor Guzenka left the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Ontario,
carrying 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.

(00:53):
Husenka was an intelligence officer working at the g r
U headquarters in Moscow. In nineteen forty three, he was
sent to Ottawa. His official title was a civilian employee
of the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, but he was actually
a cipher clerk on the staff of the military attache,
Colonel Nikolai Zabotin. It was Guzenka's job to deal with

(01:16):
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

(01:36):
democratic elections, freedom of speech, and better living conditions in
comparison life under Soviet rule, and conditions at the Soviet
embassy were oppressive. Gauzenka 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

(01:58):
headquarters from which they can deducted espionage activities against Canada.
Soboton had been ordered to keep his fir rings secret
from the Soviet ambassador, Georgy the Rubin. The Soviet Union
was not simply an ally of Canada. In nineteen forty four,
the boat In unexpectedly told Guzenka that he and his

(02:19):
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,
Guzenka began planning his defection. He copied or took documents

(02:43):
that he believed Canadian officials would be interested in. On
September five, ninety 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,

(03:05):
and 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

(03:26):
Norman Robertson, who was the Under 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.

(03:51):
Prime Minister Mackenzie King was initially hesitant and unsure of
Guzenka's motives, but just two days after he defected, Guzanna
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

(04:12):
espionage through 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

(04:36):
Bowen was sent 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

(04:59):
an inciting inside of the Cold Ore. Gauzenka lived under
police protection with his family and Canada for the rest
of his life. I'm Eve Jeff Coote, 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

(05:19):
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