Petrov Affair
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The Petrov Affair was a Cold War spy drama in Australia in April 1954, involving the defection of Vladimir Petrov, third secretary in the Soviet embassy in Canberra.
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[edit] The defection
Petrov, despite his relatively junior diplomatic status, was a Colonel in the MVD, the Soviet secret police, and his wife was also an MVD officer. The Petrovs had been sent to the Canberra embassy in 1951 by the Soviet security chief, Lavrenty Beria. After Joseph Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria had been arrested and shot by Stalin's successors, and Vladimir Petrov evidently feared that if he returned to the Soviet Union he would be purged as a "Beria man".
Petrov therefore made contact with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and offered to provide evidence of Soviet espionage in exchange for political asylum. The defection was arranged by Dr Michael Bialoguski, a Sydney doctor and musician, and part-time ASIO agent, who had cultivated Petrov for some time, befriending him and taking him to visit prostitutes in Sydney's King's Cross area. Bialoguski introduced Petrov to a senior ASIO officer, Ron Richards, who offered Petrov asylum plus 5,000 pounds in exchange for all the documents he could bring with him from the embassy.
Petrov had not told his wife Evdokia of his intention to defect, and was apparently happy to defect without her. The MVD sent two couriers to Australia to fetch her. Word of this leaked out and there were violent anti-Communist demonstrations at Sydney Airport as Evdokia Petrov was escorted by the MVD men to the aircraft. While on the plane, a flight attendant asked her if she was happy being escorted back to the USSR. She did not give a clear answer, so the flight attendant and crew took the liberty of radioing the awaiting ASIO agents in Darwin. The Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, decided that he could not allow her to be removed in this way, and when the aircraft stopped for refuelling at Darwin she was seized from the MVD men by ASIO agents.
These dramatic events were reported around the world. The photos of Evdokia being rough-handled by MVD agents at Sydney Airport and her agonised last-moment decision to defect with her husband, made while being bundled onto the plane at Darwin Airport that was due to take her back to the Soviet Union, have become iconic Australian images of the 1950s.
The affair grew more dramatic when the Menzies told the House of Representatives that Petrov had brought with him documents concerning Soviet espionage in Australia, and announced a Royal Commission to investigate the matter, the Royal Commission on Espionage. Petrov's documents were shown to the members of the Royal Commission (they were never made public). The documents were alleged to provide evidence of an extensive Soviet spy ring in Australia, and named (among many others), two staff members of the leader of the Australian Labor Party and Dr H.V. Evatt as being Soviet agents. Evatt (a former justice of the High Court of Australia) appeared before the Royal Commission as attorney for his staff members. His conduct before the Royal Commission eventually led to his leave to appear being withdrawn. Evatt alleged that the judges of the Commission were supporters of Menzies and biased against him.
[edit] Political effects
The defections came shortly before the 1954 federal election, and became a matter of partisan politics when Evatt accused Menzies of having arranged the defection to coincide with the elections, for the benefit of the ruling Liberal Party.
According to some, partly as a result of the Petrov Affair, Menzies was successful at the election, which Labor had been widely expected to win. The Royal Commission continued for the rest of 1954, and uncovered some evidence of espionage for the Soviet Union by some members and supporters of the Communist Party of Australia during and immediately after World War II, but no-one was ever charged with an offence as a result of the Commission's work, and no major spy ring was revealed.
Evatt's loss of the 1954 election, and his belief that Menzies had conspired with ASIO to contrive Petrov's defection, led to criticism within the Labor Party of his decision to appear before the Royal Commission. He compounded this by writing to the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, asking if allegations of Soviet espionage in Australia were true. When Molotov replied, denying the allegations, Evatt read the letter out in Parliament, inviting amazement and ridicule from his opponents.
Evatt's actions aroused the anger of the right wing of the Labor Party, influenced by the Catholic anti-Communism of B.A. Santamaria and his clandestine "Movement." Evatt came to believe that the Movement was also part of the conspiracy against him, and publicly denounced Santamaria and his supporters in October 1954, leading to a major split in the Labor Party, which kept it out of power until 1972.
The Petrovs, having been given political asylum, were eventually settled in suburban Melbourne under the names Sven and Maria Allyson, and given a pension. Prior to this, they spent an 18-month period in a safe house in Palm Beach, Sydney, with the then ASIO agent Michael Thwaites, who ghost-wrote their memoirs published in 1956 as Empire of Fear.
They lived in relative obscurity for the rest of their lives. The press was formally requested by the Department of Defence, by way of a "D-notice", not to reveal their identities or whereabouts, but this was not always honoured. Vladimir died in 1991 and Evdokia in 2002.
[edit] Verdict of history
The belief that there had been a "Petrov conspiracy" became an article of faith in the Labor Party and on the left generally for many years, although even pro-Labor historians acknowledged that Evatt's eccentric conduct had contributed greatly to the Labor split. The "left" version of the Petrov story was given in 1974 in Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair, by Nicholas Whitlam (son of Gough Whitlam, who was Labor Prime Minister at the time of publication) and John Stubbs. This book was written without access to classified documents.
Menzies always denied that he had had advance knowledge of Petrov's defection, although he did not deny that he had exploited the Affair, and Cold War anti-Communist sentiment, politically. Colonel Charles Spry, head of ASIO at the time, when interviewed after his retirement, maintained that although it had taken some months of negotiations to bring about Petrov's defection, he had not told Menzies about these negotiations, and that the timing of the defection had no connection to the elections.
In 1984, thirty years after the Affair, the ASIO files on Petrov and the records of the Royal Commission were made available to historians. In 1987 the historian Robert Manne published The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage, which gave the first full account of the Affair. He showed that Evatt's suspicions were unfounded, that Menzies and Spry had been telling the truth, that there had been no conspiracy, and that Evatt's own conduct had been mainly responsible for subsequent political events.
But Manne also showed that although there had been some Soviet espionage in Australia, there was no major Soviet spy ring, and that most of the documents given by Petrov to ASIO contained little more than political gossip which could have been compiled by any journalist. This included the notorious "Document J" which had been written by Fergan O'Sullivan, a member of Evatt's staff, and passed to Petrov. Despite Manne's research, many on the left continue to believe in a Petrov conspiracy.
[edit] Further reading
- 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 agent Michael Thwaites)
- Nicholas Whitlam and John Stubbs, Nest of Traitors: The Petrov Affair, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1974
- Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage, Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1987
[edit] External link
- Mrs Petrov's death brings bizarre affair to end (Sydney Morning Herald article by Robert Manne)
