The Petrov Case

The employee of the Soviet embassy in Australia V.M. Petrov , formally holding an insignificant post of the third secretary, in reality was a KGB personnel officer. His wife, E. A. Petrova , also had an officer rank and also worked as a cryptographer at the embassy. Spouses Petrova were sent to work in Australia in 1951 on the orders of the then head of the Soviet special services L.P. Beria , who at that time held the post of Deputy Presovmin of the USSR. After the death of Stalin in March 1953, Beria was defeated in the struggle for power at the top of the Soviet leadership, was arrested and soon shot. Many of Beria’s closest employees were also shot or sent to jail, and “cleaning” of personnel began in the state security apparatus. Petrov had every reason to fear that he would suffer the same fate. In order not to fall under the “purge”, he decided to flee the embassy as a preventive measure. To this end, Petrov contacted representatives of the Australian Counterintelligence ( ASBR ) and applied for political asylum in exchange for providing secret information known to him about the actions of Soviet intelligence in the West.

Australian counterintelligence accepted Petrov’s offer. The preparation and organization of the escape was carried out by Michael (Mikhail) Bialogursky, a Polish doctor, who was also a secret officer of the ASBR. Bialogursky was familiar with Petrov for a long time and knew about his true profession. For the purpose of recruitment, Bialogursky repeatedly invited Petrov to walk around Canberra 's evil places: restaurants, bars and brothels ^[1] . To organize the escape, Bialogursky introduced Petrov to the ASRR personnel officer, Ron Richards, who offered Petrov political asylum, 5,000 Australian pounds at a time, and retired in exchange for secret embassy documents.

The transition to the side of Australia took place on April 3, 1954 ^[2] .

Petrov sought asylum alone, without informing his wife Evdokia Petrova , who was in another city at that time. It is believed that initially he did not plan to take her with him when fleeing. Nevertheless, after Petrov’s flight, the Soviet special services attempted to forcibly remove Evdokia Petrova to the USSR. To do this, two accompanying KGB officers forcefully brought her to Canberra airport and, against her will, in the presence of journalists and photo reporters, dragged her on a plane to the USSR.

When the Australian public and the media became aware of the attempted forcible removal of Evdokia Petrova to the Soviet Union, this had the effect of a political scandal, powerful anti-communist demonstrations took place at the Sydney airport. After that, by order of the Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies , the Australian police intervened. When the plane made an intermediate landing for refueling at the airport of the capital of the Northern Territory of Australia, the city of Darwin , the police boarded it and disarmed two Soviet " diplomatic couriers " on the formal grounds that they illegally carried weapons on board the aircraft and then released Evdokia Petrova. After a telephone conversation with her husband, she decided to stay in Australia and join him.

Later, the Petrova couple received political asylum in Australia and the remaining years of their life lived under the protection of the Australian special services in Bentley, a suburb of Melbourne ^[3] .

During the year after the escape of Vladimir and Evdokia Petrova, ASIO Australian intelligence officers interrogated. Especially for participation in the interrogations of Petrov, the British intelligence officers MI-6 also arrived ^[3] . As it turned out, Petrov took with him a lot of things related to Soviet intelligence in Australia and other Western countries ^[4] , in particular, containing information that for many years the USSR government, using its embassy in Canberra as a cover, managed an extensive spy network in Australia ^[4] . The Petrovs handed over to the Australian special services extremely important secret information, a significant part of which concerned Soviet codes ^[3] . In addition, Petrov provided information on the structure of the entire Soviet intelligence apparatus and the Soviet intelligence network in the West. For the Soviet special services, the escape of the four Petrovs was a real disaster - on the basis of the information they provided, more than 600 Soviet agents around the world were discovered ^[1] .

Petrov’s information helped shed light on the actions of deeply conspiratorial Soviet agents known as the Cambridge Five . In particular, Petrov said that two of the five agents already failed, Guy Burgess and Donald Macklin , were taken to the USSR and lived in Kuibyshev. Petrov's data helped to further reveal the so-called. the third , which turned out to be a senior British intelligence officer Kim Philby .

The Petrov case caused a major scandal in Australia, when it was proved the deep penetration of Soviet intelligence services into the political circles of Australia. The investigation of Petrov’s information was carried out by the Royal Commission on espionage, which was created after his escape to the West. It is believed that largely on the basis of information from Vladimir Petrov, the Australian authorities managed to decipher the network of Soviet agents in Australia, known as KLOD.

The organization was headed by the communist Walter Clayton, and also included Rick Throssell, son of the world-famous Australian writer Katharina Suzanne Prichard, who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although the Royal Commission’s report did not confirm Rick Throssell’s involvement in espionage in favor of the USSR, his further career was overshadowed by suspicions of possible leakage of secret information from him to Soviet agents.

In addition to them, information for the Soviet special services was transmitted by other members of the organization, among whom were employees of ministries, special services, scientists and intellectuals, imbued with sympathy for communism and the Soviet Union of the 30s ^[3] .

A connection was also found between the leader of the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party of Australia, and, consequently, a connection with the Soviet spy network. In response, G.V. Evatt, the leader of the Labor Party at the time, accused Prime Minister Robert Menzies of organizing Petrov’s flight to discredit himself. These accusations led to a catastrophic split in the Labor Party ^[1] . And to Menzies, speculation in the Petrov case helped win the next election ^[3] .

Petrov’s information turned out to be so valuable that the reputation of the ASBR in the eyes of the special services of the United States and other Western allies improved significantly ^[1] . On the other hand, Soviet-Australian relations deteriorated greatly due to the Petrov affair: the incident led to an international scandal that caused the temporary closure of the Soviet embassy in Canberra and the expulsion of a large number of Australian diplomats from Moscow.

Petrov’s case was reflected in works of art, many of which were awarded prizes:

• Document Z , a novel by Andrew Croome, which won the Australian / Vogel Literary Award in 2008. ^[5]
• Mrs Petrov's Shoe , a play by Noelle Janaczewska, which won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for drama in 2006. ^[6]
• The Petrov Affair , a 1987 television mini-series. ^[7]
• The Petrov Poems , a 2013 verse-novel by Lesley Lebkowicz
• The Red Shoe , a novel by Ursula Dubosarsky , which won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award and the Queensland Premier's Literary Award in 2006. ^[6]
• The Safe House , an animation by Lee Whitmore, narrated by Noni Hazelhurst , which won Best Animation at the Sydney Film Festival 2006. ^[8]

• Russian-Australian relations

• Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, Empire of Fear , Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1956 (these memoirs were ghost-written for the Petrovs by the then ASIO officer Michael Thwaites )
• Nicholas Whitlam and John Stubbs, Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair , University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1974
• Michael Thwaites, Truth Will Out: ASIO and the Petrovs , William Collins, Sydney, 1980
• Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage , Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1987
• Ursula Dubosarsky , The Red Shoe , Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2006
• Rowan Cahill. “ Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997): Journalist, Communist, Intellectual,” Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, 2013
• Andrew Croome, Document Z , Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2009

• Mrs Petrov's death brings bizarre affair to end - an article by Robert Manne in The Age newspaper
• Cahill, Rowan , “ The Making of a Communist Journalist: Rupert Lockwood, 1908-1940, ” Working Lives , 2003. Account of the career development of the journalist associated with authorship of Document J.
• Neely F 2010, Menzies and the Petrov Affair , Clio History Journal .
• ozhistorybytes - Issue Eight. Peter Cochrane [National Center for History Education, homepage http://www.hyperhistory.org/ ]