Скачать или смотреть 5th September 1945: Defection of Igor Gouzenko to Canada exposes a Soviet spy network in the West

Igor Gouzenko had been working as part of the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU, encoding and decoding messages at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. However, he had grown disillusioned with the Soviet regime and feared returning to the USSR at the end of his posting. He resolved to defect and take documents that would reveal Soviet intelligence operations in Canada and beyond.

On 5 September 1945, Gouzenko left the embassy with over 100 documents, including evidence of Soviet efforts to obtain information on nuclear weapons research. However, his story was initially rejected by both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a local newspaper. It was only after Soviet agents attempted to break into his apartment to retrieve the documents that Canadian authorities took Gouzenko and his family into protective custody.

The documents he carried provided proof of a Soviet espionage network. They revealed that agents had been seeking classified information on atomic research, including the Manhattan Project. Names of Canadian government officials and scientists involved in passing information to the Soviets were uncovered. As the revelations spread to the United States and Britain, concerns about Soviet infiltration of Western institutions increased.

Gouzenko’s defection had far-reaching effects. In Canada, several people were arrested and convicted of espionage. The defection also alerted Western governments to the extent of Soviet intelligence operations. Coming only days after the end of the Second World War, it marked one of the earliest incidents of the Cold War as wartime alliances gave way to rivalry and mistrust.