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3Kcnen~lHrn 3 . ~ ,_ CCCP r=nr.3685 ,,, ,{ -- r.104TA (-{, 001 diasporiana.org.ua CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON CANADIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS Unive~ty Partnership Centre I Georgian College, Barrie, ON Vol. 9 I Canada/Russia Series J.L. Black ef Andrew Donskov, general editors CRCR One-Way Ticket The Soviet Return-to-the-Homeland Campaign, 1955-1960 Glenna Roberts & Serge Cipko Penumbra Press I Manotick, ON I 2008 ,l(apyHoK OmmascbKozo siooiny KaHaOCbKozo Tosapucmsa npuHmeniB YKpai°HU Copyright © 2008 Library and Archives Canada SERGE CIPKO & GLENNA ROBERTS Cataloguing-in-Publication Data No part of this publication may be Roberts, Glenna, 1934- reproduced, stored in a retrieval system Cipko, Serge, 1961- or transmitted, in any1'0rm or by any means, without the prior written One-way ticket: the Soviet return-to consent of the publisher or a licence the-homeland campaign, 1955-1960 I from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Glenna Roberts & Serge Cipko. Agency (Access Copyright). (Canada/Russia series ; no. 9) PENUMBRA PRESS, publishers Co-published by Centre for Research Box 940 I Manotick, ON I Canada on Canadian-Russian Relations, K4M lAB I penumbrapress.ca Carleton University. Printed and bound by Custom Printers, Includes bibliographical references Renfrew, ON, Canada. and index. PENUMBRA PRESS gratefully acknowledges ISBN 978-1-897323-12-0 the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing L Canadians-Soviet Union Industry Development Program (BPIDP) History-2oth century. for our publishing activities. We also 2. Repatriation-Soviet Union acknowledge the Government of Ontario History-2oth century. through the Ontario Media Development 3. Canadians-Soviet Union Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. Biography. 4. Canada-Foreign relations ALEXANDER YAKOVLEV'S A Century of Soviet Union. Violence in Soviet Russia (© 2000 by YALE 5. Soviet Union-Foreign relations- UNIVERSITY PRESS) is quoted by Canada. permission of the publisher. 1. Roberts, Glenna, 1934- 11. Cipko, Serge, 1961- WALTER DUSHNYCK'S "Bait for the 111. Carleton University. Centre for Homesick"(© 1956 by NATIONAL REVIEW, Research on Canadian-Russian INC., 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, Relations NY, 10016) is reprinted by permission of 1v. Series the publisher. DK274.0584 2007 947 1 .00411009045 One-Way Ticket was copyedited, designed, C2007-906146-X and typeset by DENNIS CHOQUETTE in Ottawa, fall/winter 2007- The typefaces are Cartier and Legacy Sans. The text stock is Domtar Plainfield, an acid-free, Forestry Stewardship Council-certified paper. The cover stock is Domtar Proterra. In memory of PETER M. ROBERTS (1927-2003), third secretary, Canadian Embassy, Moscow (1957-59 ), Canadian ambassador to the ussR (1983-85), and initiator of this study. For those who, ever hopeful, persisted in the belief that somewhere, in the old country or the new, better lives were attainable for themselves, their children, their grandchildren. Contents 9 Preface 14 Abbreviations 17 The Appeal 37 Mikhailov's Committee Attacks 54 Counterattacks 69 Introducing the Returnees 88 Disillusionment 104 The Canadian Embassy, Moscow 120 Dual Citizens, Dual Homelands 141 The Last Days of the Committee 155 Return Ticket 194 Not the End 196 Notes 204 Index Preface IN 1957, A YOUNG CANADIAN NAMED NADIA GOLIK CAME TO PETER ROBERTS'S office at the embassy in Moscow. She had come with her parents to the Soviet Union from Canada and now wanted to return to Toronto. Peter had just called with his ambassador, David Johnson, on Andrei Gromyko, newly appointed foreign minister of the ussR, who had expressed no sym pathy for the Canadians who wanted to leave. Accordingly, Peter told Nadia it was unlikely she would receive an exit visa in the near future. She asked him to communicate to her boyfriend that she wanted to return to him, but could not - a mission that Peter fulfilled on his next visit home. As far as Peter knew, Nadia returned to Ukraine and lived happily, or unhappily, ever after. That meeting with Nadia was the beginning of the project on the return to the homeland. One day in the early i99os Peter saw the name of Nadia's friend, a musician, on a Toronto billboard. After making con tact with him, Peter learned that Nadia was living in Ottawa. When they met again it became clear that she was part of a little-known story of the Cold War. And so the research began. Nadia helped Peter find other "returnees." They are quoted throughout this book; and the authors are 19 particularly grateful to them for opening up the stories of their lives. The authors also sympathize with those survivors of the experience who chose not to be interviewed. Interviews The quotations with reference to the following families are used with the kind permission of each interviewee. The full interviews are maintained in the Return to the Homeland files at the Centre for Research in Canadian Russian Relations (cRcR), University Partnership Centre, Georgian College, Barrie, Ontario. The material gives human voice to government documents and offers glimpses of the returnees' resilience. GOLIK FAMILY ·Nadia Golik Demidenko and her brother, Bill Golik, were the first returnees to be interviewed in Ottawa and Toronto respectively (along with Nadia's husband, Anatoly Demidenko, and their son, Slava Demidenko) by Peter and Glenna Roberts and Richard Longley of Fovea Films. LENKO FAMILY ·Material on the Lenko family was taken from an interview with Jim Lenko by Mike Trickey of Southam News, whose permission the authors gratefully acknowledge. His original illustrated article based on the interview appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, 21November1999· It was also car ried by the Edmonton Journal and the Montreal Gazette. THE BRADFORD FAMILY . A member of the family from Bradford who requested that the family name not be used was interviewed by Glenna Roberts in February 2004. OLGA BRESHKO · Olga Breshko's story is taken from They Came to Stay: North Americans in the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987) by Paula Garb, combined with an interview in Toronto with Glenna Roberts, 2005. WOLCHUK FAMILY · Valerie Wolchuk was interviewed in Toronto by Peter and Glenna Roberts, July 1999· WATT FAMILY ·Carl Watt's interview in Moscow with Mike Trickey, "Voice of Russia has a Canadian accent," was published in the Ottawa Citizen, 15 September 1996. Carl was also a subject in Paula Garb's They Came to Stay. 10 I PREFACE GEORGE-YURI MOSKAL· George-Yuri Moskal's story is based on an interview with Serge Cipko. WALTER SAVICH ·Walter Savich's story about his family is based on a conver sation with Glenna Roberts. OLEH PIDHAINY · Oleh Pidhainy (Oleg Pidhaini), author of Mr. Khrushchev Goes Slave-Hunting, was interviewed by Glenna Roberts and Richard Longley. He has granted permission for this material to be used in this book. Interviews in Ukraine The authors are grateful to Jennifer Anderson Fockenier, a graduate student at Carleton University and an associate of CRCR, who interviewed descendants and relatives of several returnees in April 2001 in Ukraine. This material is also on file with CRCR. The interviewees were identified through advertisements placed in the Ukrainian media by Liudmila Shangina and Leonid Polyakov of the Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies, Kyiv. She also inter viewed Volodymyr Ivanovych Serhiichuk, director of the Ukrainian Studies Centre, Taras Shevchenko National University, Kyiv. Former Members of Canada's Department of External Affairs Several officers of the Department of External Affairs whose signatures appeared on documents from the i95os declined to be interviewed because they felt they did not remember the campaign well enough to add to its history. The authors thank those former officers who contributed, most of whom were posted in Moscow between i955 and i96i: Max Yalden, Marshall Crowe, Kathleen Berton Murrell, Tom Delworth, and Blair Seaborn. Peter Roberts is quoted from his letter to Larry Zolf, csc, i992, and from interviews recorded by Richard Longley. The Authors Glenna Roberts took part in the interviews recorded by Peter Roberts and analysed the archival documents that became available when he was too ill to continue with the project. She is a member of the board of directors of cRcR. Serge Cipko earlier conducted research in archives in Ukraine and Buenos Aires for a doctoral dissertation on Ukrainian immigration to I II Argentina. He researched libraries and media files and translated Russian language material from Vestnik and Za vozvrashchenie na Rodinu, and all Ukrainian-language material from Ukrainske slovo, Ukrainske zhyttia and Za povernnenia na Batkivshchynu. He currently heads the Ukrainian Diaspora Studies Initiative of the Ukrainian Canadian Program at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. Sponsors The Centre for Research on Canadian-Russian Relations began in i990 as an organized research unit of the history department at Carleton University, Ottawa, under the direction of Professor Larry Black. He and CRCR are now associated with the University Partnership Centre at Georgian College, Barrie. Professor Black provided encouragement and valuable insights throughout the project. Material is included from the publication he edited with Martin Rudner, The Gouzenko Affair: Canada and the Beginnings of Cold War Counter-Espionage (Penumbra Press, 2006 ). The Donner Canadian Foundation sponsored a CRCR project to find, copy, and bring to Canada from Russia archival documents related to Canada. In 2000 it allocated funds for specific use on the "Return to the Homeland Project." The grant enabled publication of an interim work, CRCR Occasional Paper No. 8, "Canada and the Khrushchev Government's 'Return to the Homeland' Campaign," by Serge Cipko and Peter M. Roberts, in November 2000. To the foundation and its chairman, Allan Gotlieb, the authors are especially grateful. With the publication of this book, another step, although probably not the last, has been taken in discovering "the truth" behind the campaign. The Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, Winnipeg, and Lakehead University both supported the project in its early stages.