Posted on 09/01/2002 7:09:17 AM PDT by Clive
All their time in Canada, Igor and Anna Gouzenko lived vigilantly, under false identities, secretly and ever watchful for their own security.
To many who didn't know, it seemed bizarre to the point of neurotic. Yet it kept them alive - certainly Igor, who until his death by heart attack in 1982 was an implacable foe of the Soviet system and the one who exposed its subversive malignancy to the West after World War II.
By the time Igor's wife, Svetlana, died in 2001 there was likely no danger, but a lifetime of caution was hard to shake. The Gouzenkos lived under the false name "Krysac," with their eight children born in Canada bearing that name.
This Thursday, a public memorial service will be held at their gravesite in Springcreek Cemetery on Mississauga's Clarkson Rd. For the first time since 1945, their real name - Gouzenko - will be identified with them, inscribed on their headstone.
Theirs is a story like no other.
In 1945, Gouzenko, an officer in Soviet military intelligence (GRU), worked as a cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, encoding and decoding messages to Moscow. He "escaped" with 109 documents that exposed a massive spy ring in Canada.
At first his efforts to defect were rejected. No one was interested. Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King was reluctant to believe "Mr. Stalin" would condone espionage. When Soviet officials invaded Gouzenko's Ottawa apartment, police realized something unusual was afoot and moved in.
Sir William Stephenson, the spy guru known as "Intrepid," persuaded the government Gouzenko was important and must be protected. Igor and his pregnant wife were hidden at Camp "X" - a spy training centre near Oshawa that is slated to become a museum of clandestine operations.
Extensive spy network
The documents Gouzenko turned over to the RCMP resulted in a royal commission inquiry and some 20 Canadians were charged with espionage-related offences. The spy network was so extensive that all the individuals involved weren't prosecuted. Some cover names were never explored. Treason reached into the halls of government bureaucracy.
Gouzenko's revelations shocked the western world, and led to exposing the atomic spies in the U.S. and Britain: Harry Gold, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May, Bruno Pontecarvo and, eventually, Sir Anthony Blunt.
Justices Robert Taschereau and R.L Kellock concluded their royal commission report: "In our opinion Gouzenko, by what he has done, had rendered great public service to the people of this country, and thereby has placed Canada in his debt." Peaceniks and the lib-left never ceased denigrating Gouzenko. They didn't believe Soviet subversion existed, and campaigned ceaselessly against those who did.
During his 37 years in Canada, Gouzenko was hounded by myths. It was widely accepted that he existed by suing those who criticized him. Untrue. He sued those who told lies about him - and then only for token amounts.
"If I don't defend my name, no one else will," he once told me.
When I opened the Moscow bureau for the old Toronto Telegram, Gouzenko was surprised that one could be critical of the system yet not be overtly punished. Times were changing, and we became friends.
But caution remained his creed. He rarely made appointments, and liked to just appear. His caution was justified when a KGB "sleeper" agent was ordered to kill him in the late 1960s - but defected to the RCMP instead. Corrupted by the good life, the Soviets said.
It was also claimed Gouzenko was an alcoholic, was always subsidized by the government, that he had no useful information. All untrue. He was a diabetic in later years, blind but uncomplaining and relentlessly working to protect Canada from its wilful naivete.
For his first 15 years in Canada, Gouzenko got no income from the government, but lived off the sale of books, articles, appearances and his paintings, which are surprisingly good. His Fall of a Titan won a Governor General's Award for Literature. The movie rights were sold, but no movie was ever made.
The Diefenbaker government granted him a modest pension, since for his own security he couldn't hold a steady, predictable job. He came out of hiding to oppose Pierre Trudeau as Liberal leader in 1968, and considered him a possible Castro of Canada. He documented his theory with impressive documentation and analysis. Wrong - but courageous.
The Gouzenkos became passionate Canadians. When asked if he ever regretted his "choice" of defecting when besieged by problems, Gouzenko would respond instantly and indignantly: "How could I regret choosing 'freedom' for me and my family?" His kids weren't told their family history until they were old enough to understand. None learned Russian, and today all are "Canadian" to the core. In fact, they alone are justification for the Gouzenkos' choice.
Unpublished novel
Igor could not have survived so resolutely had not Anna possessed such grit, humour, intelligence and spirit. In abeyance is an unpublished Gouzenko novel, Oceans of Time, waiting for an imaginative publisher.
The Gouzenkos even had foes inside the RCMP. At his death, Gouzenko had five suits pending against writers who quoted unnamed RCMP sources saying he was alcoholic, unreliable and provided no useful information.
Odd for the RCMP - and 100% wrong.
The government of Canada has designated the "Gouzenko Affair" as an event of national significance, and plans a monument or plaque to this effect. Some feel the marker should be in the park across from the Ottawa apartment the Gouzenkos lived in when the story of his escape began. Others think Camp "X" would be an appropriate site.
Regardless, it is recognition long overdue. This Thursday, Igor and Anna's children will be at the graves of their parents, seeing for the first time the Gouzenko name openly honoured, with no concern about security.
Almost the same thing here. The lefties and the media KNEW subversion existed in the US (hell, they were part of it!) and they campaigned ceaselessly against those who tried to stop it. To this day, the latter-day-commies have made Senator McCarthy to be a bad guy, rather than the hero-patriot he was, and the weasel traitors who refused to testify, to be good guys.
The US traitors refused to testify against their co-workers who they knew to be Soviet/commie spies, in effect, saying, "our obligation to our co-conspirators is greater than our obligation to our country," and were made heroes by the Hollywood co-conspirators they were protecting.
Sounds like something a modern Liberal Democrat would say.
Yah. We got that sort down here. Not just willfuly naive, but relentlessly and viciously naive.
His story reminded me of what Nixon said about his wife: "Whe is no longer popular because her virtues are no loner in fashion." I guess, by the time Guzenko tried to save Canada from her enemies, it was no longer en vogue to be a Canadian.
There are no communists in Hollywood, are there? </sarcasm off>Does this meean no one can now tell this story of anti-communism using the movie media?
This is the same P.M. that talked to his dog and dead mother for advice. I wonder who Chretien talks to?
Well, at least his wife didn't 'run off' with Mic Jagger.
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