Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko (January 26, 1919 – June 25, 1982) was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. Three days after the end of World War II, Gouzenko defected to Canada with documents containing details of Soviet espionage activities in Canada. This gave rise to what was known as the "Gouzenko Affair" and may have been responsible for starting the Cold War.
Biography[]
Gouzenko was born in January 1919 in Russia, the youngest of three children. He studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute. While at the institute he met his future wife Svetlana "Anna" Gouseva; the couple married soon after meeting.
During World War II, Gouzenko trained as a cipher clerk and was posted to the Soviet embassy in Canada. This gave him access to information about Russian spy activities in Canada. On being informed at the end of the war that he and his family would be sent back to Russia, and not wanting to return, Gouzenko took 109 documents containing information about Soviet spy rings and walked out of the embassy, defecting to Canada.
After looking over the documents, the Canadian government discovered that a spy ring was stealing government secrets and decided to act. Canada had been an important member of the Manhattan Project and the government was concerned that Russia might get nuclear secrets. To that end, 39 suspects were arrested. In fact, Gouzenko's defection is credited with having "ushered in the modern era of Canadian security intelligence".
Other countries were tipped off by the Gouzenko Affair that they had been infiltrated by the Soviets and held their own investigations. Gouzenko provided many vital leads which assisted greatly with ongoing espionage investigations in Britain and North America. The documents he handed over exposed numerous Canadians who were spying for the Soviet Union. A clerk at the External Affairs, a Canadian Army captain, and a radar engineer working at the National Research Council were arrested for espionage. A spy ring of up to 20 people passing information to the Soviets led by Fred Rose was also exposed.
Gouzenko and his family were given false identities by the Canadian government, with Gouzenko posing as a man named George Brown. Little is known about his life afterwards, but it is understood that he and his wife settled down to a middle-class existence in the Toronto suburb of Clarkson. They raised eight children together.
While supposedly living under the radar, Gouzenko wrote two books. One was a non-fiction account of his defection. The other was a book called The Fall of a Titan, which won the Governor General's Award. Gouzenko also appeared on TV multiple times, always with a hood over his head. He died of a heart attack in 1982 at Mississauga, Ontario.