SEPT 5, 1945: Three days after the official end of WWII, Russian ciper clerk Igor Gouzenko defects to Canada, having worked in the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa since Jun 1943 and as a lieutenant for Russian GRU Intelligence. He had taken 109 documents (including code books & decryption materials) that exposed the deep Russian spying in North America, and became a major signalling of the beginning of the Cold War (the term itself coined by author George Orwell in an essay in Oct, and later popularized specifically to geopolitical tensions by US statesman Bernard Baruch in Apr 1947). The documents revealed the theft of nuclear secrets and the planting of sleeper agents in the West. In Sept 1944, when learning that he & his family were being recalled back to Russia he decided he wouldn't return, and after hesistancy over visiting the RCMP and the Ottawa Journal newspaper, he went to the Department of Justice but was denied an appointment. On Sept 6, Gouzenko applied for Canadian citizenship and the day's end saw Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King having been informed of the incident (and initially wanting nothing to do with him), and 4 men from the Russian Embassy having broken into his apartment & failing to retrieve the incriminating documents. After visits from the police, RCMP and the Department of Extern Affairs, he was then taken to the former WWII covert training site 'Camp X' 30 miles from Toronto and further interviewed by the FBI and Britain's MI5. In Feb 1946, the sensationalist news spread of a detailed network of Canadian spies working for Moscow by passing on classified information. After PM King ordered a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Communist activity and Gouzenko's evidence led to the arrest of numerous suspects, the public shock of a Soviet spy ring in Canada had alerted the USA & UK that their countries had almost certainly also been infiltrated. Back in Russia, Gouzenko's mother died under investigation in an NKVD prison, and the parents & sister of his wife Svetlana were imprisoned for 5yrs. Her niece Tatiana was sent to an orphanage. Gouzenko & his family were given new identities by the Canadian government, and he went on to write 3 books and sell paintings. He appeared on television always wearing a hood over his head which became a trademark feature and in Jul 1954, American Marxist Granville Hicks said of him that he, "awakened the people of North America to the magnitude and the danger of Soviet espionage". His brother Vsevolod & sister Irina were discovered alive in 1956. Gouzenko died in Jun 1982 with his life story loosely based in 2 movies (1948's The Iron Curtain, and 1954's Operation Manhunt) which were both criticized by the USSR as inflammatory propaganda.
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