The ‘Enemy Within’

Left-wing Soviet Displaced Persons in Australia

Ebony Nilsson

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of History Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney 2020

Statement of Originality

This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged.

Ebony Nilsson 27 November 2020

Author Attribution Statement

This thesis contains material published in Ebony Nilsson, “On the Left: The Russian Social Club in Early Cold War Sydney,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 63-80. The research for this article was undertaken as part of the research for this thesis. I am the sole author of the article.

Ebony Nilsson

27 November 2020

As supervisor for the candidature upon which this thesis is based, I can confirm that the authorship attribution statements above are correct.

Sheila Fitzpatrick

27 November 2020

Abstract

In the wake of the Second World War, Soviet displaced persons (DPs) from Europe and Russians displaced from China were resettled across Western nations. Their migration coincided with the escalating geopolitical tensions of the early Cold War, which in an Australian context turned migrants of Soviet origin into potential ‘enemy aliens.’ Soviet DPs have generally been considered virulently anti-communist, as indeed many were. Others developed their anti-communist narratives as they negotiated displacement, emphasising beliefs which were expedient and keeping quiet about those that were not. But despite the pressures of the early Cold War, a minority of

Soviet DPs actively engaged with left-wing politics after arriving in Australia. These DPs’ political activities resisted the Australian government’s expectations of migration assimilation. Their convictions oriented them back toward a Soviet homeland and resulted in dual loyalties which appeared dangerous in Cold War Australia. Thus, left-wing DPs negotiated not only politics, but state suspicion regarding their loyalties and the surveillance of the Australian Security Intelligence

Organisation (ASIO).

This dissertation reconstructs the political and social experiences of individual Soviet DPs throughout the processes of displacement and migration. Through biography and individual experience, it traces the development of politics across continents and the interactions with intelligence which resulted. I argue that despite the Australian state’s expectation that migrants would assimilate and develop loyalty (solely) to their new home, some DPs maintained their dual loyalties and orientation toward an ‘enemy’ homeland, co-existing with attitudes to Australia that ranged from alienation to acceptance.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i

Abbreviations iii

Illustrations v

Note on Transliteration v

Introduction 1

Overview 20

Chapter One 31 The Russian Social Club

Chapter Two 57 Boris: ‘I am a Soviet citizen and so I will stay’

Chapter Three 80 Jerzy: ‘A bloody migrant who thinks he can run a union’

Chapter Four 105 Juris: The Latvian Repatriate

Chapter Five 126 Sasha: A Friend to the Rezident

Chapter Six 154 Natalia & Lydia: Harbin Women in Sydney

Chapter Seven 181 Jacob: ‘A Jew first and foremost’

Chapter Eight 207 Spies & Informants

Conclusion 242

Bibliography 254

Acknowledgments

It seems that it takes a village to raise a new historian. I am incredibly grateful to have worked under the supervision of Sheila Fitzpatrick. Her generous intellectual guidance, curiosity, careful reading of my work, and advice have been invaluable in the completion of this thesis and my development as an historian. For her generosity with her time, knowledge, and encouragement, I am tremendously thankful. Glenda Sluga’s careful engagement with my work and incisive questions have also been crucial and I am grateful for her continual encouragement and willingness to answer emails at all kinds of hours. I am thankful for Sophie Loy-Wilson’s indefatigable excitement regarding my work, her advice, and for treating me as a budding expert from the very beginning. I have also benefited significantly from the encouragement and advice provided by members of the University of Sydney’s History Department, particularly David Brophy, Mark McKenna, and Chris Hilliard. Without their generous intellectual engagement this dissertation would not be what it is today. The research for this thesis was made possible by funding from a University of Sydney Postgraduate Award (which I owe Frances Clarke an immense debt in assisting me to obtain), a John Frazer Travelling Scholarship, the University of Sydney’s Postgraduate Research Support Scheme, and the Tempe Mann Travelling Scholarship provided by the NSW Association of Graduate Women. It has been a privilege to be in the orbit of an accomplished research team working on an ARC Discovery Project on ‘China Russians,’ and I am grateful for the assistance, advice, and friendship of Jayne Persian, Ruth Balint, Justine Greenwood, and Ekaterina Heath. They have answered my questions, assisted with sources, and included me in their work and community throughout. I am similarly thankful for the assistance of Mara Moustafine and Elena Govor, whose knowledge of the Russian community in Australia is unmatched. To other scholars who have answered my queries, and provided helpful feedback and general comradeship throughout, particularly Alexandra Dellios, Phillip Deery, Evan Smith, Jon Piccini, Claire Wright, Rhys Crawley, Max Kaiser, and Simone Battiston, my grateful thanks. Sections of this thesis have been presented at the Sydney ‘China Russians’ conference in 2019, the Australian Historical Association’s Conferences in 2018 and 2019, the Australasian Association for European History’s Conference in 2019, UNSW Canberra’s Conflict and Society Seminar in 2019, the ‘Biographies and Politics’ Conference at POLIN Museum in Warsaw, 2019, and the University of Sydney’s History on Wednesday Seminar in 2020. I am deeply grateful for

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the comments and feedback I received at these conferences and seminars. I also could not have conducted this research without the assistance of staff at the National Archives of Australia, NSW State Archives, the State Library of NSW, the National Library of Australia, the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at ANU, and the Sydney Jewish Museum Archive. I was generously welcomed by an Australia-Pacific History Writing Group during 2020 and am grateful to Meg Foster, Jarrod Hore, Michelle Bootcov, James Keating, Genevieve Dashwood, and Liam Kane for their friendship, and helpful comments and discussion of my work. To others I have met during the PhD journey who have made it such a joyful experience, including Jamie Dunk, Hollie Pich, Marama Whyte, Dan Seaton, and Ryan Cropp, I am grateful. It is these kinds of friendships which keep one sane during the research journey. Particular thanks are due to Rohan Howitt, for reading my work and knowing exactly what I’m trying to convey, helping me navigate course coordination, and steadfast support and encouragement. And to Emma Kluge, for her relentless pomodoro-ing and encouragement, and constant willingness to listen, whether I needed to verbally process, vent, or celebrate. Alexandra Pyatetskaya’s perseverance in teaching me Russian has also been enduring and invaluable. And my nearest and dearest: thanks to Tayla Laing for her enduring support in all things, including visiting cemeteries to find particular Latvian graves. To Katie Smith, for sharing equally in excitement and stresses, and her incredible proof-reading. Rianna Bingham, for always being my personal cheer squad, and Emily Dunn, for always wanting to hear more stories from my work. To Brent Hutchin, for ringing me while walking home from work, just for a chat. Without my parents, Jo Burn and Tim Hutchin, I would never have made it this far. Thank you for always encouraging me, supporting me, and cheering me on. And finally, to Daniel – my partner in all things. Thank you for supporting me on this, and every journey. I’m excited to begin our next one.

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Abbreviations

ALP Australian Labor Party ARU Australian Railways Union AWU Australian Workers’ Union BREM Glavnoe Biu͡ ro po delam rossiĭskikh ėmigrantov v Man’chzhurii Bureau of Russian Émigré Affairs in Manchukuo CER Chinese Eastern Railway CPA Communist Party of Australia CSIR Council for Scientific and Industrial Research DLP Democratic Labor Party DP Displaced Person FIA Federated Ironworkers Association IRO International Refugee Organisation NCC New Citizens Council NTS Natsional’no͡ Trudovoĭ Soiuz͡ National Alliance of Russian Solidarists RFP Russian Fascist Party SMP Shanghai Municipal Police SPH Special Psychiatric Hospital SSM Soiuz͡ Sovetskoĭ Molodezhi Union of Soviet Youth TASS Telegrafnoe Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soiuza͡ Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration VOKS Vsesoiuznoe͡ Obshchestvo Kul’turnoĭ Sviazi͡ s zagranitseĭ͡ All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries WCC World Council of Churches ZPP Związek Patriotów Polskich Union of Polish Patriots

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In notes: DG Director General DDG Deputy Director General FO Field Officer LO Liaison Officer OIC Officer in Charge PSO Principal Section Officer SFO Senior Field Officer SLO Senior Liaison Officer SO Section Officer SSO Senior Section Officer

Intelligence Organisations: Australia: ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, 1949- CIB Commonwealth Investigation Bureau, 1919-41 CIS Commonwealth Investigation Service, 1946-60 United Kingdom: MI5 The Security Service, 1909- United States: CIA Central Intelligence Organisation, 1947- FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1908- Soviet Union: GRU Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie (Main Intelligence Directorate under the Red Army), 1918-92 SMERSH Smert’ shpionam (Death to Spies, Military Counter-Espionage), 1943-46 NVKD Narodnyĭ Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), 1934-46 MGB Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennoĭ Bezopasnosti (Ministry for State Security), 1946-53 MVD Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del (Ministry for Internal Affairs), 1946-53 KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoĭ Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), 1954-91 RIS Russian Intelligence Services (catch-all term used by Western intelligence)

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Illustrations

Figure 1.1 Russian Social Club, 727 George Street, c. 1940s 32 Figure 1.2 New Year’s Party at the Russian Social Club, c. late 1940s 38 Figure 2.1 Boris Binetsky, c. 1949 58 Figure 3.1 Jerzy Bielski, c. 1948 81 Figure 3.2 Jerzy Bielski visits the Polish Consulate and speaks with Polish 102 official Bohdan Piaskowski, ASIO Surveillance Photographs, October & August 1966 Figure 4.1 Juris and Martha Pintans, c. 1950 106 Figure 4.2 Juris Pintans, Mug Shot, 1961 122 Figure 5.1 Sasha Dukin in Germany, 1948 129 Figure 5.2 Sasha Dukin, 1948 134 Figure 6.1 Natalia Stashevska, c. 1947 161 Figure 6.2 Lydia Hitrova, c. 1940s 172 Figure 7.1 Jacob Horowitz, c. 1940s 183 Figure 8.1 ASIO photographic surveillance of Lydia Mokras’ wedding, 1961 217 Figure 8.2 Dr. Michael Bialoguski at the Petrov Royal Commission, 225 Darlinghurst, September 1954 Figure 8.3 Lydia Mokras and Michael Bialoguski meet Soviet Ambassador 236 Lifanov at the Soviet Embassy, c. early 1950s Figure 8.4 ASIO photographic surveillance of Lydia Mokras at Mascot 239 Airport, Sydney, 1960

Note on Transliteration In transliterating names and terms from Russian, I have followed the United States Library of Congress transliteration system, except for substituting ‘y’ for the final ‘ii’ in male names (Klodnitsky rather than Klodnitskii). I have also used the conventional English spellings of first names (Lydia rather than Lidiia). In cases where I know how a particular subject gave their name in Australia, I have used that spelling. I have also employed the feminine forms of surnames for Russian women (Hitrova rather than Hitrov).

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Introduction

Jakob had been working at Wolfram mine, in an isolated, heavily forested part of Tasmania, for two months when he broke his wrist. His arm was in plaster for the next few months and he moped around the cold tin huts which housed the mine workers, dependent on other migrants for food.1 He was only about nineteen when he arrived in Australia as a displaced person (DP) in 1948.

The International Refugee Organisation (IRO) listed him as Jakiw Zalensky, born in Dubno,

Poland, in 1928.2 But Soviet authorities thought he was Iakov Fomich Zelenskii, born in Kharkov,

Ukraine, in 1929.3 It would have been sensible to shift his birthplace by these 1,000 or so kilometres when speaking with the IRO, as it made Jakob a Pole living outside Soviet borders in 1939 and thus, a candidate for resettlement rather than repatriation to the Soviet Union. He had been a forced labourer for the Germans during the war and afterward, found his way to a DP camp in the American zone of occupied Germany. He was young and unsure where to go next but after camp officials’ lectures on the awful conditions in his former home and the possibilities which lay abroad, he eventually accepted resettlement in Australia.4

Jakob was young, single, and physically fit – precisely what Australia’s migration officials were looking for. He worked various manual labouring jobs under his two-year contract with the

Australian government: there was a timber mill, a wool factory (they fired him for sleeping on the job), a hospital, the railway, and a biscuit factory.5 The work was often difficult and in isolated,

1 “Young migrant is returning to Russia,” Tribune, 2 April 1952, 7. 2 National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA): SP908/1, POLISH/ZALENSKY JAKIW, ‘Jakiw Zalensky [Polish – Arrived Melbourne per PROTEA 30 September 1948].’ He may have been a little younger – Jakob’s father listed his son’s birth year as 1930 when he attempted to track him down via the International Red Cross Tracing Service, see: NAA:A6126, 1416, ‘ZALENSKI, Jakiw’: RD NSW for ASIO HQ, Zelensky, Yacob Fomich, Zelensky, Jakiw, 29 May 1952. 3 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, hereafter GARF): 9526/6s/836. My thanks to Sheila Fitzpatrick for this reference. 4 “Young migrant,” Tribune. 5 NAA:A6126, 1416: J. Baker Report, Yascha Zelinski, 15 August 1951; G. McNeil, Detective Sergeant, to Superintendent of Police, Launceston, Attached correspondence Jakiw Zalensky known as “Sasha” A Zelensky, and Jasca Zelinsky, suspected communist, 4 December 1951; J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Jakiw Zalensky, referred to in Operation “Fairmile,” 2 January 1952. 1

rural locations. These were the jobs that Australians did not want. Jakob told an immigration official that the Tasmanian mine was ‘200 years behind European working conditions.’6 Living conditions were not much better, in the communal, barrack-style dormitories of workers’ camps and migrant hostels. But he persevered, finishing his contract with the government and settling in

Sydney, where he joined other young migrants who were also beginning new lives.

Jakob’s story thus far is a familiar one for historians of the postwar DP migration scheme.

DPs altered their biographies, birthplaces, and ages to increase their chances of resettlement and often encountered harsh conditions under the Australian indentured labour scheme. What Jakob did next was less typical, however. While working at the biscuit factory, he decided that he had had his fill of capitalist Australia was going to return home to the Soviet Union. He said so, apparently angering a White Russian and a German Army veteran who yelled at him: ‘You no good, you Communist!’7 This triggered a scuffle where Jakob was stabbed with a knife. Young

Zelensky was not deterred, however, and when he met a few Soviet officials at the Russian Social

Club in Sydney – Vladimir Petrov, the Embassy’s Third Secretary, and Anatoly Gordeev, an

Assistant Attaché – who offered to organise his repatriation paperwork, he accepted.8

The young DP departed Sydney in March 1952, bound for Murmansk via London.9 The next morning, with Jakob safely away from Australian shores, the communist newspaper Tribune published an interview he had granted them a fortnight prior. Tribune presented Jakob as the

‘typical’ DP, fed up with the poor working conditions of capitalist Australia. He told the reporter:

To call me a Communist is silly. I have never been a Communist Party member. Germans took me

from my home when I was fourteen. I was too young to be Communist member. But I not too

6 NAA:A6126, 1416: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, 2 January 1952. 7 “Young migrant,” Tribune. 8 NAA:A6126, 1416: RD NSW Report, Soviet Embassy and Russian Social Club, 31 October 1951; RD ACT to ASIO HQ, Yacob Fomich Zelensky, 17 March 1952. 9 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts among ‘Displaced Persons’ Resettled in Australia, 1950-53,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, 1 (2017): 56. 2

young to see our country under socialism has good conditions, free medicine, free education and

is better system for working man than capitalism.10

As interviews conducted by Harvard University in postwar Germany showed, this kind of admiration for the Soviet Union’s education and healthcare was common among Soviet DPs, despite their anti-communism and often vehement objections to the Soviet political system.11 All of the resettled DPs were ostensibly anti-communist – they had to claim as much in order to be considered for the IRO scheme. Plus, they had chosen resettlement when they could have simply returned to the Soviet Union if they had wanted to. Some chose Australia because it seemed the furthest they could get from war and communism. Despite the frequently basic conditions of their initial years, most persevered and established themselves in Australia. Some became Cold Warriors, engaging with the struggle to free their now-Soviet homelands, and others left the political conflicts of Europe behind them. But there were also stories like Jakob’s; a DP who not only liked Soviet healthcare and education but was ostracised by his migrant co-workers for being a communist and told Petrov he wanted to fight with the Red Army in Korea, where he would ‘kill Yanks and bloody

Australians.’12 Relatively few Soviet DPs actually went through with repatriation, like Zelensky did, but there was a significant minority who engaged with left-wing, often pro-Soviet and pro- communist, politics in Australia despite the pressures of the early Cold War. It is these lives with which this dissertation is concerned.

In the years immediately following the Second World War, Europe’s displacement crisis met postwar reconstruction and the emerging Cold War, and the largest mass refugee resettlement program of the twentieth century was born. From 1947, Western nations in need of labour began resettling large numbers of DPs, mostly Eastern Europeans, under the auspices of the IRO.

10 “Young migrant,” Tribune. 11 Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 381; Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc, April 2021). 12 NAA:A6126, 1416: RD NSW Report, 31 October 1951; K.J. Kennedy to Officer in Charge of Police Special Branch, Jakiw Zalensky, also known as ‘Sasha’ A. Zalensky and Jascha Zelinsky, suspected communist, 14 November 1951. 3

Simultaneously, a wave of Russian migration from China was beginning. Russians and Jews, some recent refugees and others long-term residents of China, were displaced by the unfolding Chinese

Communist Revolution and emigrated, often to Australia or the US. The mass resettlement of these predominantly Eastern European refugees, previously citizens of an Allied state, coincided with developing Cold War tensions between East and West. The rapidly changing postwar world was gripped by anxieties about Russians, communists, and spies, and quickly found a new foreign enemy which loomed both overseas and in their midst. A third world war appeared imminent and many DPs became potential ‘enemy aliens’ who, if not demonstrably anti-communist, would require monitoring, regulation, and even internment by the state. If local communists were the

‘enemy within’ and a potential fifth column in the event of war, then left-wing DPs were the enemy for whom Australia had opened the gates.

The newly formed Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was tasked with monitoring these potential enemies and did so with gradually increasing efficiency. Soviet DPs’ interactions with ASIO often began in their first year or two of life in Australia and some continued for decades. If DPs chose to associate with left-wing groups and so-called communist ‘front’ organisations or with Soviet officials stationed in Australia, ASIO recorded them as potentially

‘adverse’: that is, likely to engage in subversion or espionage. Information gathering became

ASIO’s primary weapon in the battle against communist subversion and Soviet espionage and even the most mundane of these migrants’ activities were observed, infiltrated, wiretapped, photographed, recorded, analysed, and archived by its officers.

This dissertation shows that some Soviet DPs engaged actively with left-wing, pro- communist, and pro-Soviet ideas, forming and invigorating émigré political communities, despite the pressures of the early Cold War. Some were influenced by involvement on the Left in Europe or China, or their experiences of the Soviet Union prior to emigrating. Others moved toward left- leaning migrant groups in Australia, rather than their anti-communist counterparts, with a variety

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of motivations and amid various social pressures. They were often ostracised by other migrants and sometimes by Australians but formed their own vibrant communities, nonetheless. These

DPs’ political activities resisted the Australian government’s expectations, which required that postwar migrants jettison their former lives to become assimilated New Australians. They were refugees who had ‘chosen freedom’ in the West and thus expected to be grateful for the opportunities that a democratic, capitalist Australia had afforded them and become hard-working contributors to its economy. They were ‘people with problems’ but on the way to a sunnier future.13

Some DPs were unhappy or dissatisfied, however. Some did not want to stay (indeed, some left), avoided becoming naturalised, retained connections to their Soviet homeland and its officials, and believed in Soviet communism. Some were pro-Soviet patriots, or sought the workers’ paradise that Australia was, perhaps, not. Their political beliefs oriented them back toward a homeland that they had chosen not to return to and resulted in a kind of dual loyalty that appeared dangerous in

Cold War Australia. So, how did left-wing Soviet DPs deal with these dual loyalties? How did they take political paradigms formed in Europe and China, and negotiate both Australia’s political culture and state suspicion regarding their loyalties?

Left-wing Soviet DPs have not previously been the subject of scholarly attention. There is a wealth of scholarship on postwar DPs but the question of why DPs who were pro-Soviet and pro- communist would not simply repatriate to the Soviet Union has not received substantial scrutiny.14

There is valuable work which traces the processes of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation

13 It was social scientists like Jean Martin who recognised the DPs as ‘people with problems,’ see Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 142-46; Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947-1977 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1978), 78. 14 For an examination of economic motives for resisting repatriation and the IRO’s treatment of these cases, see: Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 51-57. 5

Administration (UNRRA) and IRO’s aid and resettlement schemes, particularly the camp system and the political developments which expanded the definition of DPs to include victims of war, fascism, and communism.15 There are multiple accounts of the forced repatriation of Soviet DPs conducted by the Allies in the early postwar period and its often dire consequences, and more recently, the Soviet Union’s ‘soft’ voluntary repatriation efforts.16 In the case of ‘China Russians,’ too, there are studies which explore Soviet attempts to encourage repatriation and experiences of returnees.17 It has often been treated as self-evident that those who resisted repatriation did so fearing persecution if they returned and ispo facto, held strong anti-Soviet and anti-communist convictions. The lives of left-wing DPs suggest otherwise. As historian Sheila Fitzpatrick asserts, some DPs decided not to return based on an assessment of the risk it posed to him or herself, rather than a hatred of the Soviet system.18 This dissertation builds on this body of literature regarding DP and ‘China Russian’ migration, exploring how DPs who generally supported Soviet communism, or socialism more broadly, negotiated the choice of resettlement rather than repatriation, including some who eventually changed their minds and returned.

15 See, for example: Cohen, In War’s Wake; Louise Holborn, The International Refugee Organization (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-51 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Anna Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011); Laura Hilton, “Cultural Nationalism in Exile: The Case of Polish and Latvian Displaced Persons,” The Historian 71, 2 (2009): 280-317; Andrew Paul Janco, “‘Unwilling’: The One-Word Revolution in Refugee Status, 1940-51,” Contemporary European History 23 (2014): 429-46; Jayne Persian, “Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categorisation(s),” Journal of Australian Politics and History 58, 4 (2012): 481-496. 16 On forced repatriation, see: Mark Elliott, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in their Repatriation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Nikolai Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977). On ‘soft’ repatriation, see: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Motherland Calls: ‘Soft’ Repatriation of Soviet Citizens from Europe, 1945- 1953,” The Journal of Modern History 90, 2 (2018): 323-350; Simo Mikkonen, “Not By Force Alone: Soviet Return Migration in the 1950s,” in Sharif Gemie and Scott Soo, eds., Coming Home? Vol. 1: Conflict and Return Migration in the Aftermath of Europe’s Twentieth-Century Civil Wars (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 183- 200. 17 Bruce Adams, “Reemigration from Western China to the USSR, 1954 to 1962,” in Blair Ruble and Cynthia Buckley, eds., Migration, Homeland, and Belonging in Eurasia (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008), 183-201; Laurie Manchester, “Repatriation to a Totalitarian Homeland: The Ambiguous Alterity of Russian Repatriates from China to the USSR,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16, 3 (2007): 353-388. As Manchester notes, much of the scholarship on returning China Russians has focused on earlier waves in the 1930s and these returnees’ repression under Stalin. See, for example: Steven Merritt, “‘Matushka Rossiia, primi svoikh detei!’ [‘Mother Russia, Accept Your Children!’]: Archival Materials on the Stalinist Repression of the Soviet Kharbintsy,” Rossiiane v Azii 5 (1998): 205-229; Svetlana Onegina, “The resettlement of Soviet citizens from Manchuria in 1935-36: A Research Note,” Europe-Asia Studies 47, 6 (1995): 1043-1050. 18 Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril. 6

Australia’s fraught relationship with migrants and migration history has resulted in a wealth of literature regarding the government’s motives for accepting DP migrants (which were less than humanitarian), the formation of DP immigration policy, and the restrictions and expectations placed upon DPs after arrival.19 The DP experience has also received attention and recent work has traced transnational journeys to Australia and the ways in which DPs were, despite the circumstances of their displacement, masters of their own destinies.20 ‘China Russians’ have received comparatively less attention, but are the subject of some important recent work.21 There had been increasing enthusiasm for migration histories in Australia generally, but these accounts have tended to focus on migrants’ lives after arrival. As Ruth Balint has observed, this reduces ‘the

“prehistory” of migrants to a footnote, thus mimicking the official doctrine of assimilation that required migrants to shed their identities and their pasts.’22 This dissertation, like recent works by

Sheila Fitzpatrick and Joy Damousi, examines migrants as transnational actors in motion. It is

19 See, for example: Eric Richards, Destination Australia: Migration to Australia since 1901 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008); Andrew Markus, “Labour and Immigration 1946-9: The Displaced Persons Program,” Labour History 47 (1984): 73- 90; Klaus Neumann, Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees, A History (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2015); Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia, 1950-1970 (Perth: Freemantle Press, 2008); Jayne Persian, “‘Chifley liked them Blond’: DP Immigrants for Australia,” History Australia 12, 2 (2015): 80-101; Ruth Balint, “‘To reunite the dispersed family’: War, Displacement and Migration in the Tracing Files of the Australian Red Cross,” History Australia 12, 2 (2015): 124-142; Karen Agutter, “Her Majesty’s Newest Subjects: Official Attempts to Assimilate Non-English Speaking Migrants in Post-war Australia,” History Australia 16, 3 (2019): 480-495. 20 See, for example: Janis Wilton & Richard Bosworth, Old Worlds and New Australia: the post-war migrant experience (Melbourne: Penguin, 1984); Nonja Peters, Milk and honey – but no gold: postwar migration to Western Australia, 1945-1964 (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2001); Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: from displaced persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “‘Determined to get on’: Some Displaced Persons on the Way to a Future,” History Australia 12, 2 (2015): 102-123; Catherine Kevin & Karen Agutter, “The ‘unwanteds’ and ‘non-compliants’: ‘unsupported mothers’ as ‘failures’ and agents in Australia’s Migrant Holding Centres,” The History of the Family 22, 4 (2017): 554-574; Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and their Quest to Leave Europe after 1945 (Forthcoming with Cornell University Press, 2021). Along with migrants’ experiences, the ways postwar migration has been remembered has been the topic of recent interdisciplinary studies, see, for example, contributions in: Kate Darian-Smith & Paula Hamilton, eds., Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Alexandra Dellios & Eureka Henrich, Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage: Beyond and Between Borders (London: Routledge, 2020). 21 Ruth Balint, “Before Australia: Historicising Russian Migration via China after World War II,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 4. The exception to this is the migration of Jewish refugees to Australia from Shanghai, see: Antonia Finnane, Far From Where? Jewish Journeys to Shanghai (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999); Suzanne Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (New York: Holmes and Meier, 2001). For recent work on ‘China Russians’ in Australia, see: Mara Moustafine, Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (Sydney: Random House Australia, 2002); Sheila Fitzpatrick & Justine Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration Policies,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 41-62; Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai 1946-47,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 21-40; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle: Tubabao as a way station for refugees from China to Australia, 1949,” History Australia 16, 4 (2019): 695-713; Nicholas Pitt, “White Russians from Red China: Resettling in Australia, 1957-59,” (Masters Diss., Australian National University, 2018). 22 Balint, “Before Australia,” 4. 7

interested in the complexities of the journey and the ideas, politics, and experiences migrants arrived with, which shaped the communities they joined and formed in Australia.23 While encompassing a broader community, this project examines the intricate details of seven DPs’ lives, tracing their experiences before Australia – as far as can be ascertained – through to their political and social worlds in Australia.

Though this is a history of migration, it is one inexorably tied to the Cold War. Without this social, cultural, and political context, the DPs at the core of this project might have lived much simpler lives in Australia. The Cold War gained domestic significance by 1948-49, when Menzies’

Liberal/Country Party successfully mobilised anxieties to win the election of 1949.24 What followed was a decade marked by the question of what constituted ‘subversion’ and what active measures and sweeping controls the state could institute to counter such activities. DPs were thus settling into Australian cities as refugees who generally spoke Russian, associated with other

Eastern Europeans, and supported left-wing ideas at the height of state and public anxiety about precisely these characteristics. But migrants have rarely been a part of Australia’s Cold War story.

Scholarship on the early Cold War has generally focused on politics at the international and party levels, middle-class culture, and spies.25 As Ruth Balint and Zora Simic have pointed out, despite its vibrancy, migration history has remained largely ‘quarantined from mainstream Australian historiography’ – a claim that rings true in the case of the Cold War and scholarship of the political

23 I have been particularly influenced by Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Mischka’s War: A European Odyssey of the 1940s (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Fitzpatrick’s forthcoming monograph White Russians, Red Peril and Joy Damousi’s Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia’s Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 24 David Lowe, Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’: Australia’s Cold War, 1948–1954 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999), 101-127. 25 See, for example: Ann Curthoys and John Merritt, eds., Australia’s First Cold War, 1945-1953, Vol 1: Society, Communism and Culture (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984); David Lowe, Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’ (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999); John Murphy, Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000); Phillip Deery, “‘A most important cadre’: The Infiltration of the Communist Party of Australia during the early Cold War,” Labour History 115 (2018): 1-25. On the Communist Party of Australia, see Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party from origins to illegality (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999) for the period up to the Second World War, and on the postwar and Cold War periods, see contributions in Jon Piccini, Evan Smith & Matthew Worley, eds., The Far Left in Australia since 1945 (New York: Routledge, 2019). 8

left more broadly.26 A number of Cold War studies have been written by former political activists themselves, often now scholars, as a kind of ‘memoir-history.’27 These accounts, in particular, note how the question of loyalty pervaded not only one’s political allegiance but also one’s social world.28 And the issue of loyalty was all the more pressing if you were a newly arrived migrant who spoke Russian and found identity in a Soviet homeland while living in an ostensibly anti- communist Australia.

The state’s anxiety about migrants with dual loyalties manifested in both assimilationist policies and the various ways that ‘aliens’ were registered, monitored, and policed. These controls were instituted largely by police but in the postwar period, Australia’s new security service, ASIO, increasingly had a role to play.29 While there are several detailed histories of ASIO and its operations, none of these have devoted significant attention to its surveillance of migrants.30

Indeed, while the history of surveillance in Australia has been the subject of some scholarly work, its focus has typically on public figures, particularly writers, intellectuals, and political activists.31

With a few notable exceptions, there is little scholarship which discusses the surveillance of ordinary people; in other words, there have been few histories of ASIO’s surveillance ‘from below.’32 Drawing on ASIO’s records, several memoirists and family historians have produced

26 Ruth Balint and Zora Simic, “Histories of Migrants and Refugees in Australia,” Australian Historical Studies 49, 3 (2018): 378. 27 Peter Love and Paul Strangio, eds., Arguing the Cold War (Melbourne: Red Flag Publications, 2001); Ann Curthoys and Joy Damousi, eds., What Did You Do in the Cold War, Daddy? Personal Stories from a Troubled Time (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2014). 28 Curthoys & Damousi, What Did You Do in the Cold War, Daddy?, 13. 29 Mark Finnane, “Controlling the ‘alien’ in mid-twentieth century Australia: the origins and fate of a policing role,” Policing and Society 19, 4 (2009): 456. 30 See David McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994); Jenny Hocking, Terror Laws: ASIO, counter terrorism and the threat to democracy (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004); Frank Cain, Terrorism & Intelligence in Australia: A History of ASIO & National Surveillance (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008) and more recently, the official histories of ASIO: David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963, Volume I (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014); John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963-1975, Volume II (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015); John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley, The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO, 1975-1989, Volume III (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2016). For example, David Horner’s volume of the official history devotes only two pages to ASIO’s role in migrant naturalisation, an area which consumed significant amounts of ASIO’s vetting resources, see The Spy Catchers, 270-1. 31 See, for example: Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled: Security Surveillance of Australian Authors and Intellectuals, 1920-1960 (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble 1993); Phillip Deery, “‘A most important cadre’,” 1-25. 32 Examples of this kind of surveillance history include: Phillip Deery, “‘Dear Mr. Brown’: Migrants, Security and the Cold War,” History Australia 2, 2 (2005): 40-1 – 40-12; Evan Smith & Anastasia Dukova, “ASIO and the Monitoring 9

valuable accounts of their own and their families’ activities and surveillance.33 Further, though a number of scholars have considered their own ASIO files, most notably in a volume edited by

Meredith Burgmann, historians’ use of ASIO’s surveillance records is an emerging field in which this dissertation is situated. This is a history which makes extensive use of ASIO’s records to explore of how ‘ordinary’ migrants engaged with Australia’s political culture and negotiated dual loyalties during the early Cold War.

This dissertation reconstructs the political and social experiences of left-wing Soviet DPs and their interactions with the ostensibly secret world of intelligence throughout the processes of displacement and migration. It engages with two distinct streams of migration – DPs from Europe and Russians from China, but employs the term ‘Soviet’ to encompass Eastern European DPs who had lived under Soviet authority and China Russians, some of whom had also experienced

Soviet occupation in Harbin.34 Similarly, ‘left-wing’ is employed in a broad sense, encompassing a

of Irish Republicans in Australia during the ‘Troubles’,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 66, 2 (2020): 251-270; Evan Smith, “When the Personal Became Too Political: ASIO and the Monitoring of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia,” Australian Feminist Studies 33, 95 (2018): 45-60; Gianfranco Cresciani, ASIO and Italian ‘Persons of Interest’: A History of Sydney’s Federation of Italian Migrants and their Families (FILEF) (Ballarat: Connor Court Publishing, 2017). 33 Mark Aarons, The Family File (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2010); Michael Komesaroff, Reds Under the Bed: ASIO and an unusual bunch of suspects (Melbourne: Hybrid Publishers, 2018); Meredith Burgmann, ed., Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO files (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2014). 34 DPs who had lived under Soviet authority in Europe included pre-war Soviet citizens, but also those living in the Baltic States, Western Ukraine, Belorussia, and other territories incorporated into the Soviet Union after the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact who automatically received Soviet citizenship at the end of 1939. There were also Poles who did not necessarily receive citizenship but were evacuated or deported to the Soviet Union and lived there during the war. For Eastern European migrants, particularly those who had lived in the Soviet Union, nationality, citizenship, and ethnicity were frequently complex and entangled concepts. The Soviet Union (and the Russian Empire before it) was a multinational and multiethnic entity, encompassing both the majority group of ethnic Russians alongside Ukrainians, Belorussians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Jews, and numerous Central Asian, generally Islamic, groups. Many of the increasingly nationalist DP groups, particularly Latvians and Ukrainians, vehemently rejecting being labelled ‘Soviet.’ Many left-wing DPs, though, did consider themselves to be Soviet, alongside their nationality – just as they were described in their Soviet passports (Soviet citizens of Latvian, or Russian, or Ukrainian, etc., nationality). ‘DPs’ is an imperfect category, too: most of the refugees from Europe discussed in this thesis were IRO-sponsored and officially categorised as DPs, but there are also Jews who arrived on landing permits from Europe, and China Russians who were generally not IRO-sponsored (with a few exceptions). For a detailed explanation of these categories see the ‘Overview’ section. The subjects of this dissertation were all, however, displaced from a place which they viewed as ‘home’ (though it may not have been their birthplace, or their ‘homeland’) and for ease of expression, I refer to them collectively as ‘DPs.’ 10

spectrum of varying pro-Soviet, pro-communist, trade union, and anti-communist socialist migrant views.35 I use individual experiences and biographies as a window into broader communities, to untangle some of the complexities of these migrants’ social and political worlds, as they travelled across continents. As Tom Griffiths has explained, ‘[b]iography allows me to display the personal complexity and ambivalence that undermines cultural expectations; collective biography enables me to reach beyond the individuals toward social habits and cultural metaphors.’36 This dissertation is interested in the diversity of DPs’ social and political experiences, and traces a series of lives to explore the ways that migrants’ pasts shaped their interactions with a new, often alien, political culture in Australia.

Tracing transnational journeys necessarily requires transnational sources. DPs from

Europe were subject to screening by UNRRA and IRO to determine their eligibility and resettlement, which produced records. Some of these screening files were passed to Australian authorities upon resettlement and are now available among the Department of Immigration’s records at the National Archives of Australia (NAA). Usefully, these often document the stories that DPs told officials about themselves, sometimes in multiple iterations, through multiple rounds of screening. DPs were not always truthful about their backgrounds and the biographies they gave the IRO contain inaccuracies but are revealing of the ways DPs shaped and re-shaped their identities throughout the process of displacement. Other IRO records, like nominal rolls of departing DP ships, are now in the International Centre on Nazi Persecution, Arolsen Archives, and provide information on the categories migrants eventually departed Europe under (whether accurate or not): nationality, religion, age, etc.

35 As such, there isn’t a coherent political platform that all of these migrants can be grouped under. Some were committed socialists but remained anti-communist, some primarily trade unionists, and others were committed Stalinists. I have also included migrants who were primarily pro-Soviet patriots but don’t appear to have had strong views on such things as nationalising industry or establishing a workers’ state – the context of the Cold War oriented them toward the Left, whether they liked it or not, and thus they were embroiled in these political struggles. 36 Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: the antiquarian imagination in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6. My thanks to Meg Forster for this reference and her generous discussions with me regarding methodology. 11

In the case of China Russians from Harbin, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria saw the establishment of the Bureau of Russian Emigrants (BREM). The Bureau registered Harbintsy, at which time they completed a lengthy questionnaire, and kept an amount of surveillance data on them.37 Fortunately for historians, BREM’s records were captured by the Soviets with the arrival of the Red Army in 1945 and these files are now located in Khabarovsk, in Russia’s south east.38

Like the IRO’s screening records, the BREM questionnaires often reflect what Harbin Russians wanted BREM to know but also provide a wealth of biographical data.

Arriving in Australia created another set of records, as migrants had to register as ‘alien’ residents. These files included basic biographical details and a photograph registered upon arrival, and were updated if a migrant moved house or married. More interestingly, DPs’ lives sometimes appeared in correspondence regarding Australia’s migrant camps (mostly if they caused trouble or failed to secure their own accommodation and leave the camp). When they became eligible to apply for naturalisation, a few became the subject of ‘secret’ immigration files if there was protracted correspondence over a security clearance withheld by ASIO. All of these files appear in the Department of Immigration’s records, in the NAA. It is rare that one finds all of these documents on any individual case, however. And though these kinds of institutional and government archives provide biographical data and a sense of the institutions and authorities with which DPs interacted, they tell us little regarding a migrant’s experiences, political engagement and convictions, and only very rarely does the migrant’s own voice appear.

Some migrants left more personal kinds of records after resettling. And as the personal and political frequently intersected for these DPs, records like divorce files, probate packets, and coroners’ reports often contain information on aspects of their social and political worlds. Divorce records, for example, pointed to instances where extra-marital liaisons led to police tips on a DPs’

37 Harbintsy is the Russian word used to refer to residents of Harbin, as in Muscovites, Berliners, etc. 38 My thanks to Ekaterina Heath and Sheila Fitzpatrick for their assistance in accessing BREM personal files on the Russians from Manchuria/Manchukuo examined in Chapter Six. 12

politics. Probates indicated continuing rifts within families, caused by Cold War politics. Some include certifying documents, like overseas marriage certificates, which show different biographical data to what a DP reported to the IRO or other authorities, indicating aspects of their pasts they wished to falsify or obscure. Most of these are held by State Archives. Some engaged with trade union politics and appeared in those unions’ records, held in the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Australian National University. These provided insight into migrants’ working conditions and their activism regarding labour rights. On some of the DPs who considered, or did, repatriate, the

Soviet Repatriation Agency kept files and these records are available in the Russian State Archive

(GARF).39 These include the reports from the Repatriation Agency’s representative/s on the migrants’ complaints and reasons for desiring return. One of the DPs examined here returned to

Soviet Latvia and was the subject of a KGB criminal case file, which provided court transcripts and interview records detailing his background and political beliefs.

Few of these DPs left behind their own histories. One recorded an oral history interview which is now in the State Library of NSW’s collections. Apart from this, none of the migrants examined here produced their own accounts of their lives. A Russian-language historical journal,

Avstraliada, produced by the Russian community in Sydney has published many biographical and autobiographical articles on individual members of the Russian community, but left-wing Russians are almost invisible in its pages.40 Some of these left-wing DPs received obituaries after their deaths, including in the Russian newspaper, Edinenie, which provide insight into the way a community remembered the individual and the development of their public biography. A few of the organisations the DPs engaged with produced newsletters, circulars, and meeting minutes which survive and allow us to contextualise these individuals’ political involvement to some extent.

39 There are considerable obstacles for a PhD student to complete archival work in Russia within the scope of a three- year postgraduate programme and I am very grateful to Sheila Fitzpatrick for her assistance in accessing a number of relevant GARF records. 40 This is primarily an issue of communities – Avstraliada’s editorial group are a part of the largely anti-communist Russian community now centred on Strathfield, with its anti-communist Russian Club and Orthodox Cathedral. The conflicting politics of these Russian communities are discussed in greater detail in Chapter One. 13

I was able to access some community-produced histories and other material regarding the Jewish organisations that Soviet Jewish DPs engaged with via the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Archive of Australia Judaica at the University of Sydney. But like all histories of so-called ‘ordinary’ individuals, this dissertation has grappled with a lack of available sources which reveal the social, political, and internal worlds of its subjects. This is compounded in the case of left-wing DPs by the broader context of Cold War anti-communism and surveillance, which marginalised these migrants and created suspicion and secrecy. Where possible, I have used the techniques of prosopography, examining relevant memoirs, newspapers, and similar cases to shade in the broader milieu, suggesting likely knowledge, actions, convictions, and situations that these DPs’ might have engaged in or encountered.

For many of the individuals examined here, the most extensive record of their personal, social, and political lives exists within their ASIO files. ASIO watched these individuals because of their politics and social connections, and thus, their files provide some invaluable records of their social and political experiences. But they are, of course, also problematic. There is much that in

ASIO’s dossiers that cannot be taken at face value. Some of the basic facts recorded were simply incorrect, due to faulty intelligence, politically or personally-motivated denunciations by informers, or inaccurate assumptions made by ASIO’s officers. All of these issues are explored in the chapters which follow but given the factual inaccuracies contained in many DPs’ own accounts of their backgrounds, this is not a problem unique to intelligence sources. The more unique issue in the files of these migrants is ASIO officers’ frequent inability to account for nuance or contradiction in an individual’s political views and the assumptions that thus underlie their assessments. Further, there are numerous instances where intelligence was added to files with little attempt to analyse its importance or the reliability of its source. In writing these migrants’ stories from their ASIO files,

I have taken pains to corroborate details wherever possible, noting information which appears contentious, and taking a critical gaze to ASIO’s assessments. The micro-level analytical approach

I have used is of particular use here, as I was able to explore moments of contradiction in minute

14

detail, in some cases reassembling the various identities which DPs took on and then discarded, and their purposes in doing so.

In seeking to centre migrant voices and tell these stories on DPs’ own terms, the mediated voices which appear in ASIO’s records are a source of frustration. Wherever a migrants’ voice can be found elsewhere, it forms a key part of the narrative I have constructed. But in the majority of cases which follow, to my knowledge, such sources do not exist. In ASIO’s files, with the partial exception of interviews conducted with the subject and telephone interception records, migrant voices are filtered through informants’ recollections, sometimes translators’ interpretations, and

ASIO officers’ editorial, analytical, and interpretive decisions.41 These issues are discussed further in Chapter Eight, but in the absence of other sources which present these DPs’ voices at all, mediated voices, which may be read against the grain and contextualised, give a window into the world of these migrants. Further, ASIO’s data can provide an interesting counterpoint to the profiles that DPs wanted to portray to government agencies, like the Department of Immigration or IRO, or for the public domain.

But exactly what these files reveal can be another issue, given that migrants were frequently unaware that ASIO was watching. Most of this information was collected without the subjects’ consent or knowledge and none of the individuals examined here are still living and thus, have the opportunity to respond to their dossier. This is not to say that these migrants were only passive victims of ASIO – as is explored in this dissertation, in some cases they actively tried to assist

ASIO in surveilling other migrants. And their files are no longer secret but are available in the public domain, in the NAA’s collections. In five of the seven individual cases which follow, though, ASIO released their surveillance files in response to my request for information.42 These files are redacted

41 Most of the migrants included here were interviewed by ASIO (knowingly or otherwise). For a detailed examination of these issues, see Chapter Eight. 42 I requested files on the Russian Social Club (ten volumes were released), Boris Binetsky (two volumes released, and another on his brother, George), Juris Pintans (two volumes released), Sasha Dukin (three volumes released), Natalia Stashevska (one volume released), and Lydia Hitrova (one volume released). Files regarding Jerzy Bielski and Jacob Horowitz had already been released to the NAA. 15

before release and contain pieces of information which are partially and sometimes fully withheld, including, in some cases, because the data is considered particularly personal or embarrassing.43

Where salacious or controversial personal details were included in a file but were not relevant to my examination of the DPs’ social and political experience and their interactions with intelligence,

I did not include them. Further, I make no categorical claims regarding any of these DPs’ involvement in espionage as definitive proof of such activities is rarely, if ever, available to the historian. In any instances where records indicate that espionage possibly occurred, I have carefully checked the available details and have provided multiple critical readings of the evidence.

Including migrants’ full names in this history has been a matter of discussion since the earliest days of my research. Swapping names for pseudonyms poses issues in terms of finding appropriate alternatives which replicate the likely origins of the real name (and assumptions that the community, and ASIO, may have made based on their name – most often whether it sounded

Jewish, but also Ukrainian, Polish, German, and so on). Further, it makes for problematic citations, as many of the file names and numbers I cite throughout include the individual’s name. After much thought and discussion with my supervisors and other colleagues, I have used these DPs’ names.

Migrants have too often been left out of Australia’s grand narratives or reduced to folk-dancing contributors to multiculturalism. Left-wing Soviet DPs have been marginalised, in particular, by widespread anti-communism and surveillance. It does not seem my place to deny them their names. Though I play a role in constructing and interpreting them, these are their stories, after all.

Even where they include complicated, perhaps unsavoury, or less laudatory elements, they represent real migrants who did not simply contribute to Australia’s economy as the state required but also to its politics, conflicts, and intrigues. ASIO could not reconcile the contradictions and ambiguities of real migrants’ lives, but I think that readers likely can.

43 Section 33(1)(g) of the Archives Act 1983 allows a record to be exempted from public access (in part or whole) if its release ‘would involve the disclosure of information relating to the personal affairs of any person (including a deceased person).’ In the cases examined here, files on Juris Pintans (NAA:A6119, 7049) and Sasha Dukin (NAA:A6119, 7043 and NAA:A6119, 7044) included redactions on the basis of Section 33(1)(g). 16

Intelligence histories necessarily contain gaps and are subject to revision if new information is declassified or released. The time it takes to request and have ASIO files released also shapes this kind of research. These files took, on average, between twelve and eighteen months to be released (and can sometimes take much longer). This dissertation presents a selection of cases.

Some files were released late in the project and couldn’t be included, and other leads arrived on my desk without sufficient time to request further ASIO material within the scope of this project.

Further, as indicated above, this history is based on redacted records. In some instances, this presents gaps that one can read across or interpret, and in others, they remain mysterious.44 As such, the stories which follow contain gaps and questions, as well as answers.

This dissertation begins with an overview which contextualises these journeys of displacement from Europe and from China, situating left-wing DPs and their activities within their broader migrant cohorts. Chapter One examines Sydney’s Russian Social Club, a hub of left-wing migrant activity, and traces the revitalisation and conflict which the arrival of DPs brought to existing migrant communities. Many of the individual cases which follow intersect with the Social Club and its milieu, and Chapter One sets this scene. Chapters Two to Seven then delve deep into the lives of seven individual DPs, piecing together their biographies, political and social experiences, and their encounters with ASIO. Chapter Two examines Boris Binetsky, a China Russian who resisted naturalisation, highlighting the tensions which left-wing political engagement produced in migrant families. Chapter Three explores the relationship between DPs, work, and trade unions through the life of Jerzy Bielski, an anti-communist Polish socialist and union organiser. Chapter

Four traces the development of working-class politics across time and space for Juris Pintans, a

44 For instance, much of the redaction in these files concerns the names of ASIO officers. These cases are usually clear and do not require significant interpretive leaps. Some partial sentences can be analysed (though not definitively), but where whole paragraphs or pages are removed, analysis can be near-on impossible. 17

Latvian DP who repatriated to the Soviet Union with his family after eight years in Australia.

Chapter Five examines the complexities of pro-Soviet patriotism for Sasha Dukin, a young Russian

DP whose friendships with Soviet intelligence officers continually caused him trouble. Chapter Six explores the experiences of young, single China Russian women through the lives of Natalia

Stashevska and Lydia Hitrova, who both chose the left-wing Russian Club over its anti-communist counterpart. Chapter Seven untangles some of the complexities of left-wing Soviet Jewish identity for Jacob Horowitz, whose political ideas shifted with revelations of Soviet antisemitism. Chapter

Eight outlines the process of ASIO’s surveillance and system of informants and, focusing on the

Petrov Affair and its aftermath, examines the complex and often ambivalent ways that communities interacted with spies, informants, and their unmasking.

The individual lives explored were selected in part for their variety – they include three

China Russians, two Poles who spent time in the Soviet Union (one actively Jewish, the other not), a Latvian, and a Russian who arrived ostensibly as a Ukrainian. Two engaged directly with trade unions, one with left-wing Jewish politics and the Labor Party, and four with pro-Soviet Russian groups. While most of these DPs did end up settling permanently in Australia, most considered return at one point or another, and two did repatriate. Almost all maintained regular associations with foreign diplomats stationed in Australia – primarily Soviet officials, but also Polish and Czech consular staff – who were also working covertly in intelligence.

These DPs’ lives provide windows into the myriad ways in which left-wing Soviet migrants engaged with politics, before and after arriving in Australia, and the ways they invented and re- invented themselves as a result. But they also allow us to examine the ways migrant communities negotiated politics during the early Cold War, and how the Australian state has dealt with migrants’ dual loyalties. Though this is a history which contains gaps, qualifications, and ambiguities, what we do see in the chapters which follow is migrants’ agency. These DPs’ stories highlight the contradictions and ambiguities of street-level politics and the ideological changes which occurred

18

amid shifting international and personal contexts. This is a story of how migrants negotiated their own dual loyalties, in a social and political context which demanded loyalty in absolutes, and how they dealt with their own, and others’, suspicions, while engaging with Australia’s political culture.

19

Overview

All of the stories which follow begin, in one way or another, with displacement. But there were multiple ways into and out of this experience. This overview traces a range of ‘typical’ trajectories of displacement for DPs from both Europe and China, and the convergence of the two groups in

Australia, providing context for the case studies which follow. It also shows why the left-wing attitudes embraced by a minority of Soviet migrants once in Australia had often been almost invisible in the DP camps and Russian communities in China from which they had come.

Displacement: Europe & China

Though Europe’s DP camps were ostensibly only for those displaced by war and fascism, their residents included a spectrum of refugees: forced labourers taken by the Germans, prisoners of war, Red Army deserters, concentration camp survivors, and people escaping the impending Soviet occupation of their homelands. The camps, mostly located in occupied Germany, were typically organised by nationality – in some cases by United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation

Administration’s (UNRRA) design and in others, because DPs grouped themselves as such.1

Particularly for the Eastern Europeans resisting repatriation to now-Soviet homelands, the camps were a space where DPs formed exiled ‘nations,’ establishing cultural and political communities that were axiomatically opposed to communism.2 There are few stories of left-wing activity occurring in DP camps. Any DP who felt positively toward communism would have been wise to keep their mouth shut amid rising anti-communist nationalisms and the efforts of Soviet repatriation officials.

1 Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 78; 97. 2 Laura Hilton, “Cultural Nationalism in Exile: The Case of Polish and Latvian Displaced Persons,” The Historian 71, 2 (2009): 314-17. Somewhat similarly, Zionism flourished in Jewish DP camps, see: Wyman, DPs, 218-19. 20

The end of the war was chaotic and Allied authorities expected to find collaborators who had slipped into the DP population. In the latter part of UNRRA’s tenure and under the

International Refugee Organisation (IRO), vetting teams conducted thousands of screening interviews to determine eligibility.3 The DPs became adept at shifting their identities and tidying their biographies – a Waffen-SS unit became a labour battalion, volunteers became conscripts,

Russians became Ukrainians or Poles, and while you were at it, you might shave a year or two off your age.4 And all DPs who didn’t want to be repatriated were now staunch anti-communists who hated the Soviet political system. For many this was certainly true – especially those who had fled as the Red Army advanced – but others exaggerated their anti-communism and narrative of political persecution. There were many motives for choosing resettlement, like economic opportunity or adventure, which didn’t necessitate a hatred of Soviet communism. But you certainly weren’t going to tell the IRO official who was assessing you for resettlement if you did happen to believe in a workers’ state or still loved your Soviet homeland. Further, politics may or may not have impeded your chances with the officials of the country you wanted to migrate to.

Sponsorship from a left-wing organisation in the US, for example, could be an issue. But as Jayne

Persian has shown, Australian officials tended to trust the IRO’s prior assessments and further, were looking for white, assimilable workers above all else (and assumed that Baltic refugees, their ideal racial type, would be anti-communist anyway).5

Though most of the European DPs considered in this dissertation were IRO-sponsored, there were also refugees arriving in Australia with landing permits, many of whom were Jewish.

Though Australia did not have a written policy against accepting Jewish DPs, they were frequently

3 Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 38-9. 4 Wyman, DPs, 105; 112; 132; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “‘Determined to get on’: Some Displaced Persons on the Way to a Future,” History Australia 12, 2 (2015): 110-111. The ‘right answers’ to eligibility questionnaires were often circulated throughout the camps and DPs quickly learnt from each other what to say and how to clean up a biography to acceptable standards (See Cohen, In War’s Wake, 42-3). And, of course, for many DPs who had previously lived in the Soviet Union, these skills were not new (See: Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 24-5). 5 Persian, Beautiful Balts, 66-9. 21

pushed to the bottom of Australia’s racial selection hierarchy and relatively few Jews arrived via the IRO scheme.6 Greater numbers made it to Australia with landing permits, visas granted at the government’s discretion to white non-British migrants who could pay the ‘landing money’ – thus, many displaced Jewish migrants arrived under the sponsorship of Jewish welfare organisations.7

The landing permit group didn’t generally come from the DP camps, but many had been displaced and their hometowns and cities changed irrevocably by the war and Nazi occupation. They were not subject to the political screening that IRO-scheme DPs were and thus did not necessarily have to profess anti-communism, but their lack of broader ‘cohort’ or collective identity makes it difficult to trace examples of left-wing sentiment or activity, except in individual cases.

Most ‘China Russians’ also arrived as landing permit migrants. Russian émigré life in China was concentrated in Harbin, a settler-colonial Russian outpost in Manchuria. Harbin expanded as refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War arrived but though there were many of them, the city was not only a hub for White Army officers and anti-Bolshevik intellectuals.

Russians had been moving to Harbin to work on the Chinese Eastern Railway since the late nineteenth century and the city encompassed a full spectrum of ‘monarchists, social democrats, social revolutionaries, constitutional democrats and exiled Bolsheviks,’ along with a contingent of

Russian Fascists.8 There were several generations of Harbin Russians – many of the China Russians

6 Existing literature includes estimates in the range of 200-500, see: Suzanne Rutland, “Subtle Exclusions: Postwar Jewish Emigration to Australia and the Impact of the IRO Scheme,” Journal of Holocaust Education 10, 1 (2001): 61. But forthcoming research by Sheila Fitzpatrick shows that figures given to Calwell suggest 6,260 Jewish Mass Resettlement arrivals by December 1950, plus those who arrived in 1951. Fitzpatrick estimates there were around 22-23,000 Jewish arrivals (IRO & Landing Permit) between 1945 and 1951, most of whom were DPs. See: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Migration of Jewish ‘Displaced Persons’ from Europe to Australia after the Second World War: Revisiting the Question of Discrimination and Numbers,” Forthcoming in Australian Journal of Politics and History. 7 Landing permit migrants had to pay £50 landing money if nominated by an individual or organisation in Australia, or £200 if not. Andrew Markus, “Jewish migration to Australia 1938-49,” Journal of Australian Studies 7, 13 (1983): 28; Klaus Neumann, Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees, A History (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2015), 48; 73. The IRO was still involved in subsidising some of these landing permit migrants, however, see: Suzanne Rutland and Sol Encel, “Three ‘Rich Uncles in America’: The Australian Immigration Project and American Jewry,” American Jewish History 95, 1 (2009): 46. 8 Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 23. 22

discussed in this dissertation were born in China and had never seen the Motherland (or had done so only fleetingly).

Most China Russians had lived through successive decades of political upheaval. The

Soviets had a strong presence in Harbin during the latter half of the 1920s but the 1930s brought

Japanese occupiers to Manchuria, and many Harbintsy moved south to the international treaty port cities of Tientsin and Shanghai. Those who remained had the choice to either collaborate or keep their heads down.9 During the war, many China Russians experienced a surge of pro-Soviet patriotism with the Nazi invasion of their homeland. And with the Red Army’s arrival in Harbin in 1945, Soviet influence returned. A cohort of young Harbin Russians attended Soviet-style schools and Soviet newspapers, films, and literature proliferated.10 In postwar Shanghai, too, there was pro-Soviet patriotism and an influx of Soviet reading material and films.11 Many China

Russians were indeed committed anti-Soviet Whites who sought to preserve the Russian life that no longer existed in the Soviet Union, but time had passed and for some, particularly younger people, pro-Soviet sentiment was familiar and not unattractive.

With the Communist Revolution came increasing pressure for foreigners to leave China.

The Western world saw the China Russians as escaping communism once again – the IRO granted protection to 5,500 Russians in Shanghai, shipping them to Tubabao in the Philippines to await resettlement. Australia begrudgingly accepted some of these Russians, who, like the European

DPs, were subjected to security screening. But Australian Immigration officials’ attempts at screening were hampered by limited information on the refugees’ lives in China, as records fell to the Communists along with cities. In the case of the Tubabao Russians, screening was based solely on their conduct on the Philippine Island – they could claim what they liked about their

9 Mara Moustafine, Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (Sydney: Random House, 2002), 338-349. 10 Olga Bakich, “Émigré Identity: The Case of Harbin,” South Atlantic Quarterly 99, 1 (2000): 57-8; 65-6. This was particularly so after the war, as the Soviet occupiers tried to prepare Harbintsy for their expected future lives in the Soviet Union. 11 Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: the diaspora communities of Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 216; 246. 23

backgrounds, though it’s unlikely that many from this group needed to hide a pro-communist history.12

Most China Russians arrived in Australia with landing permits, however, sponsored by relatives or the World Council of Churches. Security screening was fairly limited, often resting on the credibility of the sponsor rather than the applicant.13 Many China Russians had registered as

émigrés under the Japanese but then took up the Soviet passports offered at the end of the war – these documents were perhaps the most worrisome issue for Australian officials and politicians, at one point resulting in a ban on such migrants.14 The decision to repatriate or resettle often divided families of China Russians, as some members chose the former and others the latter, but this was not associated with the kind of virulent Cold War debate that went on in Europe.15 Unlike the European DPs, China Russians did not generally have to explain their desire to resettle and thus didn’t have to emphasise anti-communism. But nor were they political innocents, and they had learnt through successive occupations that it was often best to keep quiet about one’s politics when dealing with authorities.

Transit: The Voyage

Most of the European contingent arrived in Australia on ships. Now on their way to resettlement, there was less pressure on board the ships for DPs to prove their anti-communist credentials. The

12 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle: Tubabao as a Way-Station for Refugees from China to Australia, 1949,” History Australia 16, 4 (2019): 697; 701; 708. Fitzpatrick indicates that the Tubabao group was selected by the anti- communist Shanghai Russian Emigrants Association, resulting in a strongly ‘White Russian’ contingent. 13 Other checks were carried out via British authorities in Shanghai and Hong Kong, but frequently, there was little information available. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Justine Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration Policies 1947-54: The Case of Russian/Soviet Displaced Persons from Europe and White Russians from China,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 55-6. 14 Neither Calwell nor his successor, Holt, were particularly phased by the Soviet passports issue, but many around them were. The ban was only temporary, and many China Russians arrived carrying Soviet passports. For further details, see Fitzpatrick and Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration,” 45-7; 51. 15 Until Stalin’s death, many Harbin Russians were rejected for repatriation, due to suspicions of Japanese collaboration. Groups of Tientsin and Shanghai Russians were accepted, however, and from 1954, all China Russians were eligible under Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands Scheme. Ruth Balint, “Before Australia: Historicising Russian Migration from China after World War II,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 9-10; 12. 24

tradition of denunciation many had acquired in the camps (or even earlier, in the Soviet Union) carried on, however.16 These DP-on-DP accusations were typically articulated along political lines though often pointed to other divisions and prejudices, particularly antisemitism. They were usually denunciations of ‘communists,’ triggered by such things as having an NKVD cap or Soviet passport, singing ‘Soviet songs,’ or having a false identity.17 And they were often matched by counter-denunciations of Nazi collaboration. The situation for China Russians was not especially different. Many also arrived by ship, though they had a shorter voyage and often found themselves in transit alongside other passengers who were not refugees.18 Communists were denounced on board, though denunciations of fascist collaboration were not so typical.19 Thus, left-wing inclined

DPs were still likely to keep their political opinions to themselves here, too, even as assumed identities began to slip.

Waiting Halls: Migrant Camps in Australia

Those arriving with landing permits settled directly into new lives, often in Australia cities. This included much of the China Russian group.20 The IRO-sponsored DPs, however, were tethered to their two-year indentured labour contracts and usually began their resettled lives in Australia’s migrant camps. Typically, a DP might spend two to three weeks in a Reception Centre, often

Bonegilla on the NSW-Victoria border, receiving English language and cultural instruction, and once assigned a job, would be moved to a hostel, another camp, or accommodation supplied by

16 Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and their Quest to Leave Europe after 1945 (Forthcoming with Cornell University Press, 2021). 17 Fitzpatrick and Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration,” 58-60. 18 Some European DPs, too, travelled alongside other types of migrants but more commonly arrived on IRO-chartered vessels where DPs predominated. Some also arrived by plane, particularly if trying to beat the clock on a landing permit or passport which was due to expire. Klaus Neumann, Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees, A History (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2015), 157. 19 See, for example, the case of a young Harbin woman, Natalia Koshevsky, who was denounced as being pro-Stalin by Australian soldiers to whom she spoke on the ship, in: Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc., April 2021). 20 Some of the China Russians, such as the Tubabao group, were IRO-sponsored and thus had to complete the two- year work contract like the European group. 25

their employer. Unless, of course, there was a strike happening – and there were some lengthy strikes between 1947 and 1952.21

Histories of these camps usually emphasise basic conditions, family separation, unsatisfactory food, and the cultural and religious life which thrived anyway.22 Political activity doesn’t generally get a mention, although the few DPs who were outspokenly pro-communist were likely to be ostracised by their neighbours. To the degree that politics were a concern in the migrant camps, it was largely of the ‘old world’ – debates unrelated to Australian politics, which often remained unknown during these ‘waiting hall’ months or years. Many were living and working in rural locations, sequestered from Australians and Australian émigré communities. And there were often more pressing concerns than politics during these initial two years. Many were trying to reunite families, adjusting to a new life, and at times, advocating for better conditions, such as protesting unemployment or rations.23

Some DPs began to encounter trade union politics during this time, however. DPs had to be members of the relevant union while working under their two-year contracts but were often resistant, believing all unions were communist-dominated.24 Others were more receptive. Some

DPs with rural backgrounds were encountering industrial workplaces and unions for the first time and became enthusiastic about the potential of union participation. Others found common ground with staunchly anti-communist groups like the Australian Workers Union (AWU).25 For those who

21 Persian, Beautiful Balts, 82. 22 See, for example: Christopher Keating, Greta: A History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, New South Wales, 1939-1960 (Sydney: Uri Windt, 1997); Wacol Remembered, 1949-1987 (Canberra: Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, 2003); Josef Sestokas, Welcome to Little Europe: Displaced Persons and the North Camp (Sale: Little Chicken Publishing, 2010); Ann Synan, We Came With Nothing: Story of the West Sale Migrant Holding Centre (Sale: Lookups Research, 2002); Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla, ‘a place of no hope,’ (Melbourne: University of Melbourne History Department, 1988); Bruce Pennay, “Remembering Benalla Migrant Camp,” The History of the Family 22, 4 (2017): 575- 596; Jayne Persian, “Displaced persons in Queensland: Stuart Migrant Camp,” Queensland Review 25, 2 (2018): 239-251. 23 See, for example, protests at Bonegilla over unemployment (Sluga, Bonegilla, 76; 79-82; 86), female-led mutiny at Cowra Camp over rations (“Migrant Women ‘Mutiny’ Against Ration Change,” The West Australian, 20 November 1950, 1), or DPs who wrote to politicians and conducted hunger strikes regarding camp conditions (Persian, Beautiful Balts, 89). 24 Persian, Beautiful Balts, 167. 25 See, for example, the Yallourn North Camp as an AWU stronghold (Sestokas, Welcome to Little Europe, 98; 169-70) and Jerzy Bielski’s work as an AWU migrant organiser (Chapter Three). 26

did engage with union politics, the camps were a key moment of transition, where an Australian dimension was gradually added to political paradigms developed in Europe or the Soviet Union.

DPs who lived in camps and hostels in cities could also participate in urban life and began attending politically-inflected migrant organisations, like the Russian Social Club in Sydney.

New Homes: Churches, Clubs & Unions

The end of the two-year contract brought secondary resettlement in cities for many, and the two streams of migration – from Europe and China – began to converge. Some avoided migrant communities in favour of assimilation or anonymity, but others looked for familiarity. DPs often wanted people to talk to and material to read that wasn’t in English. For many, this was a religious community: Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Polish Catholic churches, as well as synagogues, saw many new congregants.26 But social clubs and councils, which carried varying degrees of political flavour, also expanded. As in the European DP camps, most were anti- communist and fiercely nationalist – indeed, the two were largely inseparable for these communities. Preserving culture and language was a part of the fight against communism for these migrants, who often became Cold Warriors. They sought to witness to Australians who, in their view, lived complacently, far from the action.

Alongside, and often in conflict with, these exile groups existed smaller communities of left-wing migrants. For some DPs, joining these left-wing groups was less about Australia’s Cold

War politics, and more an opposition to diaspora norms, where strident anti-Soviet sentiment and the Church were becoming ever more prominent. But whether they intended it or not, many were then cast into Australia’s Cold War conflicts. The Russian Social Club in Sydney, for example, brought DPs into the orbit of their broader left via their connections to Australian leftists. A

26 Michael Protopopov, “The Russian Orthodox Presence in Australia: The History of a Church told from recently opened archives and previously unpublished sources,” (PhD Diss., Australian Catholic University, 2005), 77; Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian responses, 1947-1977 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1978), 187; Egon Kunz, Displaced Persons: Calwell’s New Australians (Sydney: Australian National University Press, 1988), 213-14. 27

corresponding Social Club was also set up in Melbourne, in 1952, though seems to have been short-lived. These kinds of clubs often facilitated DPs’ contacts with Soviet Embassy officials in

Australia. There were also a host of left-wing Jewish organisations which drew in postwar DPs, such as the Jewish Councils to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism in Sydney and Melbourne, the

Sydney Jewish Volkscentre, and the Hakoah Club in Bondi. Left-wing DPs were often participants of multiple groups and also associated with organisations run by Australians, particularly the

Australia-Russia Societies (later renamed Australian Soviet Friendship Societies) and Peace

Councils. The Australia-Russia Society was the key hub for left-wing DPs in Melbourne, and had, for a time, a DP-chairman.

As indicated above, some also engaged with trade union politics. The DPs were finishing their contracts and moving toward other employment as the unions faced internal battles between communist factions and the anti-communist Industrial Groups. In this context, DPs became new potential members and all-important votes to be courted. Anti-communist unions, particularly, invested in efforts to recruit migrant organisers who might drum up support among DPs.27 But so too did some of the non-Grouper unions. Australian trade unions were entirely different from the

Soviet model and thus, alien to most DPs. Migrant organisers, in some cases, assisted DPs in negotiating Australia’s union landscape and industrial law. Though mutual hostility typically characterised the relationship of DP migrant and union, such cases hint at a broader engagement between the two. Work appears to have been a site where DPs engaged with Australians and their politics, in some cases gradually becoming acculturated in this new political landscape.

27 Lyn Richards, “Displaced politics: refugee migrants in Australian political context,” in James Jupp, ed., Ethnic Politics in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984), 149-161. 28

Staying and Going

Many of the DPs set down roots and established themselves in Australian communities – they were neighbours, friends, fellow church-goers, and colleagues of both other migrants and

Australians. Some DPs shifted communities, burying their early years, and some became more conservative with age. Most were naturalised, though sometimes for access to specific benefits or rights, rather than a particular desire to become Australians.28 With naturalisation, they became

Australian voters. DP voting patterns are difficult to ascertain, but both the Labor and Liberal parties had New Australian Councils and tried to cultivate migrant votes to some extent.29 In the case of left-wing DPs, few appear to have associated directly with the Communist Party (even if pro-communist), but did associate with the ALP in some cases.

Not everyone set down roots, however. Australia was not often DPs’ first choice for resettlement, and some moved on to other countries, such as Canada or the US (which was typically their first choice).30 Some never made it to the post-contract period: an amount were deported, usually for absconding from their assigned employment, though on at least one occasion over politics.31 None of the DPs examined closely in this dissertation were deported or went on to secondary resettlement, though some did choose to repatriate. The Soviet Union wanted its ‘stolen’

DPs back, and Soviet citizens who wanted to return could be repatriated at Soviet expense.32 Some left relatively quickly, at the conclusion of their contract to the government, but others stayed for a number of years before deciding to return. Others returned after decades, having arrived as DP

28 Nonja Peters, Milk and Honey – but No Gold: Postwar Migration to Western Australia, 1945-1964 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2001), 286; NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1, ‘Committees of Review [of] long term residents – Greta [4cm; box 97].’ 29 Persian, Beautiful Balts, 172; Richards, “Displaced politics,” 152-161. 30 Ruth Balint, “Industry and Sunshine: Australia as Home in the Displaced Persons’ Camps of Postwar Europe,” History Australia 11, 1 (2014): 111-12; Fitzpatrick, “Russians in the Jungle,” 703; Persian, Beautiful Balts, 110-11. 31 Persian, Beautiful Balts, 108-10; 168. Some DPs tried deliberately or asked to be deported, to leave their contract and return to Europe cheaply. Holt reported the political deportation in 1951, of one ‘communist organiser.’ 32 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts among ‘Displaced Persons’ Resettled in Australia, 1950-53,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, 1 (2017): 48. 29

children or teenagers.33 But whether they chose to stay in Australia or not, many of these Soviet

DPs lived through the early years of the Cold War in the West as either Cold Warriors or potential

‘enemy aliens’ with suspect loyalties.

33 See, for example, the case of Vitaly Zasorin, a Russian DP who arrived with his parents at the age of about 12 and repatriated in the late 1970s. A.A. Faĭngar, ed., Pochemu my vernulis’ na Rodinu. Svidetel’stva reėmigrantov, Sbornik (Moskva: Progress, 1983), 241-247 (my thanks to Sheila Fitzpatrick for pointing me to this reference). 30

Chapter One The Russian Social Club

On a Sunday evening in November 1951, Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary at the Soviet Embassy and MGB intelligence officer, held an exclusive party at the Russian Social Club on George Street,

Sydney. About thirty people were invited, comprising, at Petrov’s instruction, ‘members of the

Russian Social Club and other Soviet citizens’ and of the latter, ‘not only those who possessed passports.’1 The whole party was at Petrov’s expense – though perhaps the Embassy covered costs, as this was likely a work event for the MGB colonel, whose intelligence responsibilities included monitoring émigré communities. The party had a Soviet atmosphere typical of the Social Club’s events: toasts were made to ‘Australian Soviet Friendship and progressive people,’ the ‘Great

Stalin,’ the Red Army, and ‘the Soviet and Soviet people.’2 Petrov gave a speech of about twenty minutes, where he ‘conveyed greetings from the Ambassador, especially to the Soviet citizens.’

The guest list included many of the club’s established committee members, like its long- standing president Augusta Klodnitskaya and secretary Freda Lang, who had lived in Australia for years. But there were also a number of recent migrants among the privileged guests: at least five

DPs from Europe and four China Russians.3 It was their inclusion which seems to have caused controversy within the club. There were bitter complaints from several committee members without invitations who felt that despite ‘devoting so many years to the Soviet Union and having actively supported its cause, they were excluded from the function.’4 That such a pro-Soviet event

1 NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 1’: Q Section Report to PSO B1 (Alien Section) & PSO B2, Function for Soviet Citizens and Selected Members of Russian Social Club Committee, 29 November 1951. The MGB (Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoĭ bezopasnosti: Ministry for State Security) was responsible for Soviet intelligence between 1946 and 1953. It was preceded by the NKVD and would be succeeded by the KGB. 2 NAA:A6122, 2799: Q Section Report to PSO B1 (Alien Section) & PSO B2, 29 November 1951. 3 The Soviet DPs included Lydia Mokras (see Chapter Eight), Dr. Helene Derkatsch, Yascha (Jakob) Zelenski, George (a friend of Yascha’s), and another unidentified ‘young DP.’ The China group included two married couples: Raissa Verschner and her husband, and Boris Binetsky and his wife, Ekaterina (see Chapter Two). Another committee member even told Augusta Klodnitskaya that she would ask Raissa Verschner to assist in preparing for the party, ‘because “after all, she is a Soviet woman.”’ 4 NAA:A6122, 2799: Q Section Report to PSO B1 (Alien Section) & PSO B2, 29 November 1951. 31

Figure 1.1: The Russian Social Club, 727 George Street, c. 1940s Source: Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955) would occur at the Cold War’s height – indeed, only two months after Australians had voted not to ban the Communist Party by a very narrow margin – is perhaps surprising. But it was typical of the Russian Social Club’s activity during the early Cold War. Pro-Soviet patriotism, in particular, thrived at the club and toasts to the Red Army and Soviet motherland abounded. Some members were also pro-socialist and pro-communist – and they toasted to ‘progressive people’ generally.

These activities included both established Russian émigrés and newly arrived Soviet DPs, and usually featured the presence of one or more Soviet officials.

32

The secondary resettlement of European DPs completing their labour contracts and new arrivals from China caused Sydney’s Russian community to grow five-fold.5 Many Russians maintain that this was the real dawn of ‘russkaia͡ zhizn’’ (Russian life) in Sydney, begetting new churches and social organisations and enlivening existing cultural infrastructure.6 But it also saw new conflicts emerge – both within migrant communities and between migrants and the state. In

Sydney, much of this conflict played out in the CBD, around the corner from Central Station. The

Russian Social Club (Russkiĭ obshchestvennyĭ klub) was located in the basement of No 727 George

Street, down a short flight of stairs from street-level. Its card-room, library, and dance-hall witnessed lively political and social activity during the 1940s and 1950s and it formed part of the set for Sydney’s own Cold War spy drama, the Petrov Affair. Almost directly opposite, on the other side of George Street, sat another Russian club: the anti-communist Russian House (Russkiĭ dom). DPs from China and Europe joined both groups, and the clubs’ competing loyalties and visions of diasporic identity created conflict and were frequently met with suspicion in Cold War

Australia.

While the Russian House and its members have published autobiographical histories, the history of the Russian Social Club proves more elusive. Marginalised by the intensifying anxieties of the Cold War, the club left few traces of its presence. There are few surviving club circulars, newspapers, or pamphlets from the early Cold War era upon which to construct an account of the activities of Sydney’s left-wing Russian-speaking community.7 But the club was infiltrated by

ASIO’s agents during this period – most notably Dr Michael Bialoguski – and their reports reveal an amount of the activities and personalities active in the pro-Soviet club.

5 Natalya Melnikova, Istoriia͡ russkikh v Avstralii, tom I. K 80-letiiu͡ russkikh obshchin v Avstralii (1923–2003) (Sydney: Australiada, 2004), 132. 6 Natalya Melnikova, Istoriia͡ russkikh v Avstralii, tom I, 132. 7 The club began publishing a journal in 1963, called Druzhba (Friendship), but did not have their own publication during the 1940s or 1950s. Rather, they seem to have distributed Soviet publications obtained via the Embassy. A few isolated copies of the club circular from the 1950s appear in ASIO’s files, which primarily advertised upcoming film screenings. 33

Australians had seen left-wing Russians in their cities prior to the Cold War and Russian

Social Club, however. Communist agitators and revolutionaries exiled from the Tsarist regime had settled in Australia prior to 1917, particularly in Brisbane. This Queensland Russian community became quite sizeable during the First World War and its members were often drawn to socialism or anarchism.8 They were ‘active and disaffected’ and their anti-war stance, plus some involvement in riots and social unrest (most famously the Red Flag Riots of 1918-19), made the community the subject of substantial police and government attention.9 This security interest faded; other labour movements came to the fore during the tumult of the 1920s and 1930s, and some émigré revolutionaries returned to the new Soviet state. There were also other groups, including branches of the left-wing Union of Russian Workers in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney during the 1920s.

In general, the Social Club’s key figures seem to have arrived later, in the 1930s, and thus did not have direct links with these earlier groups.10 But the Australian public and its security services had seen left-wing Russians before and knew they could potentially harbour revolutionary sentiment.

The Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS), then responsible for Australia’s internal security, had the Russian Social Club under occasional surveillance from 1946, until the newly- established ASIO assumed responsibility for monitoring potential ‘subversives’ in 1949.11 ASIO’s raison d’être and first task, known simply as ‘The Case,’ was locating the source of documents leaked from Australia’s Department of External Affairs into Soviet hands. The United States’ top-secret

8 Kevin Windle, “Nabat and its Editors: the 1919 Swansong of the Brisbane Russian Socialist Press,” Australian Slavonic and East European Studies 21, 1-2 (2007): 143–4. 9 Windle, “Nabat and its Editors,” 143-4. See also: Raymond Evans, “Agitation, Ceaseless Agitation: Russian Radicals in Australia and the Red Flag Riots,” in John McNair and Thomas Poole, eds., Russia and the Fifth Continent: Aspects of Russian Australian Relations, (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 125–71; Kevin Windle, Undesirable: Captain Zuzenko and the Workers of Australia and the World (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012). 10 Freda Lang, the Social Club’s long-running secretary, was reported as being born in Brisbane to Russian parents so conceivably could have been connected with the Brisbane left-wing Russian community. But the other key figures were primarily later arrivals: the Klodnitsky family arrived in 1937, Bella Weiner in 1927, and Razoumoff and Smirnoff during the 1930s, see: NAA:A6122, 2799: Report from R. Gamble, Russian Social Club, 21 April 1950. On the left-wing Russian activists of the early 1920s, see: Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 20-21. 11 Before 1946, the CIS was known as the Commonwealth Investigation Bureau (CIB). As it was CIS for the period covered by this dissertation, I have referred to it as such throughout to avoid confusion. NAA:A8911, 87, ‘Russian Social Club – [Sydney]’: W.H. Barnwell, Inquiry Officer to Deputy Director, Russian Social Club, 12 September 1946. 34

‘Venona’ decryptions suggested that left-wing ‘fellow travellers’ in the Department were passing documents to members of the Community Party of Australia (CPA), who in turn passed them to

Soviet Officials. ASIO thus took up surveillance of the Russian Social Club, conscious of its links to these same officials and the presence of left-leaning migrants among its membership who might engage in subversive activity and potentially, espionage.

The Russian Social Club had some connections to Sydney Russian Workers’ organisations in the 1930s but emerged primarily from war-time ‘Aid to Russia’ campaigns. Like its political

émigré founders, the club had both a political and cultural mission.12 It was nominally apolitical, but public promotion of Soviet culture, coupled with connections to left-wing organisations and

Soviet officials, made it, in Cold War terms, politically radical.13 During the Second World War, dominant activists seem to have included P. I. Gorskaya, the club’s first president; the Klodnitsky family (Augusta, George, and their son, Valentine, known as Bill) who emigrated from France in

1937; Tamara English, a middle-aged Russian-born woman; Freda Lang, born in Brisbane to

Russian parents; Alexander Klements, who was an artist or actor; and the Russian-born hotel- owners, Mr & Mrs Slutzkin.14 The club was both enlarged and enlivened by the arrival of Soviet

DPs from Europe and China in the postwar period.15

It is difficult to determine the size of the club’s membership, or how many people attended on a regular Saturday evening in the early 1950s. Membership records have not survived and

ASIO’s attempts at compiling membership lists were piecemeal, and often frustrated by faulty intelligence.16 Some ASIO reports note the number of people at single events: for example, 150

12 NAA: A6122, 2800, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 2’: Report No. 14523, Russian Social Club, 7 May 1956. 13 The club’s original charter proclaimed that it would remain ‘non-political,’ but took ‘no responsibility for the views, opinions and beliefs of its members.’ See NAA: A6122, 2800: Report No. 14523, 7 May 1956. 14 Surveillance of the club began only in 1946 and with the paucity of other sources, there is little information regarding the club’s early membership. NAA: A6112, 2799: R. Gamble Report, 21 April 1950; “Obshchestvennye Organnizatsii: Russkii obshchestvennyi klub v Sidnee (ROK),” Avstraliada, 51 (2007). 15 Anatoly Konovets, “The Role and Function of Conflicts in the Life of the Russian Community in Sydney,” (Masters Diss., University of New South Wales, 1968), 35; K. M. Avramenko, M. A. Koreneva and K. N. Mutsenko-I͡ ͡Akunina, eds., Russkie zhenshchiny v Avstralii. Sbornik vtoroi, N. IU.͡ U (Melbourne: Mel’burnskii Universitet, 1994), 75. 16 NAA: A6112, 2799: Memo, Boris Rodionoff, 2 February 1953. 35

attended the 1952 Soviet National Day celebrations and 250 attended the same event in 1954.17

Data was also collected on attendance at some Soviet film screenings, which attracted broad public audiences including many non-Russian speakers.18 The club comfortably held around two hundred people and the rather small basement space was, at times, entirely filled with large numbers of people and lively activity.19

The club’s cultural events and entertainment naturally attracted Russians and Russian- speakers, with familiar food, language, and music, but also invited connection to left-wing

Australians beyond the Russian community. Screenings of Soviet films such as Fall of Berlin (offered multiple times due to popular demand) and Volga-Don Canal drew large crowds.20 The musical comedy Kuban Cossacks was also immensely popular and was played throughout the 1950s, becoming an ‘old favourite.’21 Not all events were Soviet-focused. The club hosted everything from state chess championships to cabaret dances, but entertainment with politico-cultural overtones predominated. These events were spirited occasions; passionate pro-Soviet speakers and film screenings invited raucous cheering, especially at Stalin’s invocation or on-screen appearance.22

And despite the club having no liquor licence, its events involved significant quantities of alcohol.23

Discussions were animated, sometimes resulting in argument and offence, but could usually be

17 NAA: A6112, 2799: Report No. 3000, Functions at Russian Social Club to Celebrate USSR National Day, 10 November 1952; NAA: A6112, 2800: Report No. 10438, 7th November Celebrations at Russian Social Club, 8 November 1954. 18 Freda Lang, the club’s secretary, was interviewed by local police investigating whether the club was breaching licencing regulations after a complaint about the film screenings. She reported to the officers that fifty to a hundred people typically attended the film nights. This number seems likely on the lower end and it would have been prudent of Miss Lang to round the figure down, given the circumstances of the interview. See: New South Wales State Archives (hereafter NSWSA): Theatres and Public Halls Branch, NRS-15318, Files relating to licences for theatres and public halls, 1895-1992, [17/3620.1]-17/3620.1[DUP2], Russian Social Club, Sydney, 1940-1976: C.T. Boston, Sergeant Third Class to The Officer in Charge of Police, No. 2 Division, Complaint regarding the screening of films at the Russian Club, 727 George Street, Sydney, 13 February 1950. 19 “Volga Don Film Draws Big Crowds,” Tribune, 25 November 1953, 11; “Films – Realist Theatrette,” Tribune, 19 November 1952, 12. 20 “The Tribune Projector on The Film World,” Tribune, 12 April 1951, 6; “US Film Men See Birth of a People’s Culture,” Tribune, 12 September 1951, 6; “Volga Don Film,” Tribune, 25 November 1953, 6. 21 “Kuban Cossack is Fine New Film,” Tribune, 19 April 1951, 4; “Films,” Tribune, 9 February 1955, 12; “What’s On,” Tribune, 30 April 1958, 11. 22 NAA: A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Film Evening at Russian Social Club, 1 February 1950. 23 “Russian Social Club,” The Sun (Sydney), 10 July 1947, 2; “Cabaret Dance,” Tribune, 17 April 1963, 11; NAA: A6112, 2799: Q Section to PSO B1 & PSO B2, 29 November 1951; NAA: A6112, 2799: ‘Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance’ Report, 4 June 1950. 36

smoothed over with an apology.24 In one reported incident, Helene Derkatsch, a Ukrainian-born

DP medical doctor, brought a very loud Russian-American man to the club as her date. Michael

Bialoguski, under his ASIO code-name J. Baker, reported that:

During the conversation he [the Russian-American] also said that America will not go to war as the

Government is afraid of the 5th Column within. Korea was but a small affair. He also said that

America’s hand would be forced when real trouble starts in the Philippines and Alaska. The man

was drinking heavily during the evening and appeared to be quite drunk toward the end of the

evening, when members of the committee were endeavouring to restrain him and get him to lower

his voice and not talk politics so loudly.25

As Bialoguski’s report indicates, club members freely expressed views on international affairs that were passionately pro-Soviet, perhaps at times emboldened by alcohol. But drinking and revelry were not the core purposes of the club. Cultural events were for entertainment, but entertainment was entangled with the club’s politics. According to Bialoguski, Augusta Klodnitskaya, club president from 1946-51, told him: ‘Our main task now is to show what great progress is being made in the Soviet Union; in science, in culture and in industry. Of course, it’s not easy. These

Australians! All they think about is beer and races!’26 She particularly disliked the club’s cabaret dance nights but they (along with film screenings) provided most of the club’s income, which allowed them to get on with the real business: establishing a ‘New Theatre’ dramatic group, organising lectures on Soviet culture and science, and hosting discussion groups on literature and politics.27

24 NAA: A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, 4 July 1951. 25 NAA: A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 11 September 1950. Regarding Bialoguski’s undercover identity as J. Baker, see David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963, Volume 1 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 163. 26 Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955), 43. Bialoguski appears to have invented, or perhaps adapted, a large amount of dialogue in writing his account of the Petrov Affair, so these were perhaps not Klodnitskaya’s exact words. They do fit with the Klodnitskys’ status as intellectual types, however, and their attempts to introduce ‘high culture’ into the club’s core activities. 27 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 52. 37

Figure 1.2: New Year’s Party at the Russian Social Club, c. late 1940s Standing (from left): Razoumoff, Bialoguski, Mrs and Mr Antonov Source: Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955)

The club’s political purpose, then, was central to its existence. With the anti-communist club just across the road, the Russian Social Club was, in both its positioning and activities, on the left. Portraits of both Lenin and Stalin adorned its walls, the club library featured large, glossy journals which depicted Soviet life, and the Revolution’s anniversary was celebrated with garlands of flowers and Soviet flags.28 This is not to say, however, that all of its members were pro- communist, pro-Soviet, or even leftists. The prevailing feeling seems to have been a pro-Soviet patriotism – devotion to the homeland as it now stood, rather than the nostalgic impulse more common across the road. But the Social Club’s members represented a spectrum of political conviction (and apathy). The club was not deeply connected to the CPA and few members joined

28 NAA:A6122, 122, ‘Russian Social Club’: K.B. to Deputy Director, 8 November 1946; NAA:A6119, 192, 'JANOVSKI, Lidia Mokras [Lidia Mokras, nee Janovski]’: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954; Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 50. 38

the party, though some were committed socialists. Its political trajectory was not smooth, but the club did move gradually to the left following the Second World War.

As the Cold War heated up in the late 1940s, a more moderate faction within the club advocated keeping a low profile.29 This group wanted the club committee free of individuals who had histories of communist or left-wing activity, which might now prove dangerous. Semon

Chostiakoff, one of these moderates, vehemently protested Bella Weiner being elected to the committee. Weiner was a CPA member who had a brief stint in Melbourne in the late 1920s, where she became known to the CIS as ‘the notorious Mrs. Weiner,’ and then became a fairly prominent party activist in Sydney during the 1930s.30 Chostiakoff feared that her infamy ‘would attract special attention to the Club.’31 Members of the moderate faction were generally still pro-Soviet but preferred to be quieter about it, likely in response to growing Australian anti-communism. The aforementioned Chostiakoff, for example, was an accomplished tenor who enthusiastically performed concerts of Red Army songs for the club.32 This group, the Chostiakoffs and various others (including Alexander Klements and Tamara English), also tended to oppose the admittance of DPs to the club for fear of their potential hooliganism, naming Sasha Dukin, the rambunctious young Russian DP discussed in Chapter Five, as a prime example.33

The club’s shift toward increasingly bold left-wing activity began under the presidency of

Augusta Klodnitskaya, the formidable pre-war arrival who sought to increase the club’s (Soviet) cultural prestige. Klodnitskaya staunchly advocated cultivating close ties with other left-wing organisations and the Soviet Embassy. Her declarations that the club should engage directly with

29 NAA: A6122, 2799: Report No. 7975, Russian Social Club General Meeting 31st January 1954, 19 April 1954; Report from 1953 (Report number and date obscured by damage to document). 30 She had perhaps been a member of an anarchist group in Melbourne, too. NAA:A6119, 1386/REFERENCE COPY, ‘WEINER, Bella aka MOSTOV, aka MOSTYN, aka WAJNER, Bella Val Berta’: Director CIB to Inspector- in-Charge CIB Melbourne, Bella Weiner, 10 March 1931; Longfield-Lloyd, Inspector CIB, to Director CIB Canberra, Mrs Bella Szepanski nee Weiner, 26 May 1932; Simon Moston/Sid Moston/Sid Mostyn, Bella Moston/Bella Weiner, 20 January 1944; Macintyre, The Reds, 311. 31 NAA: A6122, 2799: Report No. 737, 13 March 1952. 32 NAA: A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Function at Russian Social Club, 14 November 1949. 33 NAA: A6112, 2799: Report No. 5631, Russian Social Club Meeting, 31 July 1953. 39

the Soviet homeland were met with dissension from the moderate group. Bialoguski recalled that of nine committee members, four were ‘progressives’ and four were ‘moderates,’ claiming that this often left him, the ninth member, with the deciding vote.34 Tensions were running high for these kinds of leftist groups, which were increasingly suspected of being communist ‘fronts.’ The NSW

ALP had banned its members from associating with the Australian-Russian Society in August 1948

– which saw a few high-profile MPs resign from the Society, and Jessie Street resign from the ALP

– and a ban on membership of the NSW Peace Council followed in 1950.35 For the Social Club, which had close ties to both organisations, it must have seemed that the writing was on the wall.36

In July 1951, in the shadow of Menzies’ attempts to ban the CPA and only months before the question went to a referendum, there was a schism in the committee. At the half-yearly general meeting, Alexander Klements argued passionately from the floor that the Club should limit itself to social activities, because ‘if the Government took action against the Communist Party, there was a great danger that it would also view the Russian Social Club with suspicion, and…there was every likelihood that the Club would be closed.’37 This was met with loud dissension from the progressive faction, which was ‘emphatic that the Club must have the courage of its convictions.’38

The progressives were vindicated when the referendum was defeated in September, and tensions began to dissipate – either the moderates left the committee or were more accommodating of the progressive line. Having survived a vote of no confidence, Klodnitskaya commanded a progressive committee until the end of her presidency in 1952, when she was succeeded by Mr Boris Binetsky,

34 Bialoguski described the progressives as ‘a group which blindly followed the official Soviet policy in co-operation with the Australia-Russia Society’ and the moderates ‘while sympathetic to the Soviet…tried to steer clear of anything that might suggest the Club was obviously in alliance with the extreme Left.’ Bialoguski had an abiding tendency to overstate his own role so he was perhaps not always the deciding factor, but a fairly even split in the committee does fit with other reports on the period. Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 54-5. 35 “ALP Executive Ban on Australian-Russian Society,” Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 1948, 1; “A Blunt Choice for Evatt and Eddie,” The Daily Telegraph, 29 August 1948, 20; “Mrs Street Leaves A.L.P.,” The Age, 17 January 1949, 3; “ALP Peace Council Ban Attacked,” The Sun (Sydney), 11 May 1950, 11. 36 Bialoguski claimed that membership of the Russian Social Club was also banned by the ALP when the ban was placed on the Australian-Russian Society, but this doesn’t appear to be supported by any other sources. There do not appear to have been any ALP figures who were Social Club members, though, so it likely made little difference to the Party. Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 49. 37 NAA:A6122, 2799: Report by J. Baker, 4 July 1951. 38 NAA:A6122, 2799: Memorandum, Russian Social Club, 4 July 1951. 40

a pro-Soviet China Russian whom she deemed similarly progressive (see Chapter Two). Binetsky continued to steer the club on this bearing until 1954.

The club’s progressive elements seem also to have generally been strengthened by the DPs’ arrival. Bella Weiner, then part of the club’s committee, frequently ‘recruited’ (according to

Bialoguski’s reports, perhaps she just ‘invited’) young DPs to the club.39 Not all were, of course, rampant communists, or even left-wing. Some considered themselves apolitical but attended the club’s events, particularly the Soviet film screenings (which generally weren’t available elsewhere).

Indeed, a few frequented both the Social Club and Russian House.40 Others, as a clergyman associated with the anti-communist club would later observe, were ‘young people educated under the Soviet system in China and they found that the culture propagated in the anti-communist

Russian Club…was completely foreign to them as they never lived in Russia prior to the

Revolution.’41 But there were European DPs, too, who preferred the Social Club. Many were pro-

Soviet, rather than committed socialists, but supported the club’s progressives in fostering connections to the broader left-wing community and relationships with Soviet Embassy officials and representatives of TASS, the Soviet news agency.

Sometimes the DPs’ attendance was the result of generational rifts. The club had many young patrons who had arrived as DPs in their late teens or early twenties, whose parents did not attend the club and perhaps would not have approved of their children’s attendance (if they were aware of it). Lydia Hitrova, discussed in Chapter Six, arrived alone in 1957, her parents still in

39 NAA:A6122, 2799: Memorandum, Russian Social Club, 26 July 1951; Extract from Communication to Director, Function at the Russian Social Club, 14 November 1949. Bialoguski appears not to have liked Weiner much, which likely influenced the tone of these reports regarding her activities. His descriptions of her were often far from flattering, emphasising her efforts to make young men ‘feel at home’ at the club and that she was ‘a hardened Communist Party organiser’ who was perhaps rather manipulative. Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 55-6. 40 NAA:A6122, 2799: Surveillance Report Feodor and Galina NOSOV, 3 June 1950; NAA: A6122, 2801, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 3’: Report No. 34859, Georgy (Yura) RAZINKIN, 27 May 1959; Interview conducted with Alex Ilyin by Sheila Fitzpatrick, 8 July 2018. 41 One Bishop Constantine made this observation regarding the Russian Club (as the Russian House was then known) after its move to Strathfield during the 1960s but it appears to apply equally to the 1950s. NAA:A6122, 2818, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 10’: S.F.O. B2 to B2, Information Received from Sir Wilfred Kent-Hughes, Arkady Morosow, 19 March 1969. 41

Harbin, and began attending the Social Club. When her mother joined her in Australia, the older woman told the Australian police officers who interviewed her that Lydia spent most of her time at home – she may have been trying to protect her daughter, but she also does not appear to have joined her in attending the Social Club.42 Antonia (Nona) Gorbunova, another young China

Russian, was anxious to become a member of the club after arriving from Harbin, where she had been a committee member of the Union of Soviet Youth (SSM). She had migrated to Australia at the insistence of her parents but maintained a staunch desire to repatriate to the Soviet Union.43

Soviet Repatriation Officials establishing contact with DPs at the Social Club recorded other youthful intentions to repatriate kept from parents and relatives in Australia – some followed through with it, but many did not.44 Further, the Social Club’s lively atmosphere was perhaps more attractive to the young DPs. Lydia Mokras, a vivacious Russian DP in her late twenties, recalled first visiting the Russian House across the road where ‘there were only two or three people sitting at the table drinking vodka and there was no other activity.’45 She soon became a fixture at the

Social Club; a frequent (and popular) patron of its Saturday night dances. Though lack of demographic data makes definitive statements difficult, the Russian Social Club seems to have been a hub of young, left-wing, pro-Soviet DP activity in the early Cold War.

The pro-Soviet nature of the club influenced its members’ sense of collective identity.

Regardless of birthplace, in club parlance members often referred to themselves as ‘Soviet men’ or ‘Soviet women.’46 Many members were Russian-born and Russian was its lingua franca. But, like its homeland, the club remained a multinational entity, including Russian-speaking members who

42 NAA:A6119, 7042, ‘HITROVA, Lydia Stepanova Volume 1’: Special Branch Report, HITROV, Ekaterina Mihailovna, 12 April 1961. 43 NAA:A6112, 2801: Report No. 34860, Nona (Antonia) GORBUNOVA, 27 May 1959. 44 GARF: 9526/6s/888, ll. 143– 4: Notes of Interview, 31 March 1952; GARF: 9526/6s/888, l. 218. My thanks to Sheila Fitzpatrick for this reference from the Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow, known as GARF). 45 NAA:A6119, 192: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954. 46 NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, 4 July 1951. 42

were not ethnically Russian (or not only Russian), particularly Poles, Latvians, and Ukrainians.47 Dr

Michael Bialoguski, the ASIO informant credited with inducing Vladimir Petrov’s defection, was one such member. Born to Russian-speaking Polish-Jewish parents in Kiev (then part of the

Russian Empire), Bialoguski became an influential member of the club’s executive. Though he couldn’t write in Russian, he spoke it sufficiently well to keep up with events and committee meeting conducted in Russian.48 Bialoguski did not himself identify as Jewish but many Russian- speaking Jews who did were also influential members and patrons of the club, including Bella

Weiner, Jacob Horowitz (who also became a committee member, see Chapter Seven), Severyn

Pejsachowicz, and Hyam Brezniak.49 This also led to links between the club and left-wing Jewish organisations, particularly the Sydney Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. While the anti-communist Russian House was always ‘tacitly hostile’ toward Jews (and its strong connections to the Orthodox Church likely made it less attractive, in any case), the Social Club was remained open to Jewish membership.50

Like most diasporic groups, preserving the Russian language within their new anglophone home was significant to the club.51 More than once, the committee initiated community Russian

47 These were complex categories. Many of the ‘Russian’ DPs, especially those from the western borderlands, had heritage which spanned different Eastern European countries, particularly Russian/Ukrainian, but also Belorussian, Polish, and of course, Jewish heritage could be in the mix. Multilingualism was also particularly common in DPs from these regions, where borders and occupying forces might have changed more than once in a DP’s lifetime. See: Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War Story of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc., April 2021). 48 NAA:A6119, 3635, ‘BIALOGUSKI, Michael Volume 1 (Operation Fairmile)’: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile,” 31 March 1952. 49 Konovets argues in his dissertation that Jewish members were ousted from the Russian Social Club after Krushchev’s antisemitic purges (p. 35) – a confusing statement, given that Soviet antisemitism was perhaps at its height in the late Stalin period, during the early 1950s. I have not found other sources which support this. References in ASIO’s surveillance to a continued Jewish presence in the club and relationship with Sydney’s left-leaning Jewish organisations continue throughout the 1950s. It is possible that some Jewish members left in the mid-1950s due to increasing knowledge of Soviet antisemitism among Australian Jews, as with Jacob Horowitz – see Chapter Seven for a detailed discussion of this shift. (NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 28 March 1950; NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Richmond Report, Russian Social Club, 14 April 1950; NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 21 April 1950; NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 9 May 1950; NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Film Night, 10 & 18 August 1950; NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Film Evening – Maccabean Hall, 23 October 1950; NAA:A6112, 2800: Report No. 10438, 8 November 1954; NAA:A6112, 2800: Report of Interview with Brezniak, 27 January 1955). 50 Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril. 51 NAA:A6112, 2799: Report No. 6882, 4 January 1954. 43

lessons to promote the language, particularly to younger members (though these were usually short-lived).52 Though internally Russian was prioritised and carefully maintained, the club worked to remain inclusive of the broader public. Club members provided subtitled or dubbed English translations of Soviet films for public screenings, and live interpreters for lectures in Russian.53

Non-Russian speakers commonly attended and were welcome at the club, but committee members were required to be Russian-speakers during the early Cold War (and when the first meeting conducted in English occurred in 1959, an enraged Alexander Klements stormed out in protest).54

In essence, this was a Soviet Russian club, bonded by Russian language, culture and tradition, but with its gaze directed toward the Soviet Union. And like the Soviet homeland, Russian was the accepted linguistic and cultural ideal.55 Russian cultural evening were customary events, where pirozhki were served and balalaika players entertained, but there were also Slavonic Balls and All-

Slav Parties.56 This multinational inclusion, along with politics, placed the Social Club at odds, and in competition, with the anti-communist Russian club’s vigorous promotion of its authentic

Russian culture.

The Russophone club across the road, the Russian House, defined itself in opposition to communism, and thus, to the Russian Social Club. Many of these anti-communist Russians appeared to perceive that their numerically smaller left-wing neighbour, and particularly its visitors from the Soviet Embassy, posed a great threat. Some Russian House members cooperated with

ASIO, passing on information about the Russian Social Club and the movements of its patrons.57

They warned Lydia Mokras off going to the Social Club; when she arrived at the Russian House

52 NAA:A6112, 2801: Report No. 34045, Russian Social Club, 22 April 1959. 53 NAA:A6112, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 4 September 1950; NAA:A6112, 2801: Report No. 39663, Soviet Cultural Delegation, 8 December 1959. 54 NAA:A6122, 2801: Report No. 33470, Russian Social Club, 24 March 1959. 55 NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to the Director, Sydney, Russian Social Club, 15 September 1950. 56 NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 10438, 26 January 1955; NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 13432, Russian Social Club Circular Dec 1955, 25 January 1956; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Sydney File of 41/15, Communication to the Director, Sydney ‘All-Slavs’ Ball, 10 July 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Sydney File of 41/15, Communication to the Director, Russian Social Club, 4 September 1950. 57 NAA:A6122, 2801: Report No. 40857, Victor Ruslanov, 23 March 1960. 44

inquiring about a Russian-language library, she recalled a woman telling her that there was one across the road, but that ‘judging from my appearance she did not think I would belong over there.’58 It’s not clear what part of Lydia’s appearance indicated this, but she inferred that the other woman meant the Social Club was communist. She went anyway, to make up her own mind.

Another first-time visitor, a China Russian woman named Lydia Savva who arrived in 1961, recalled being rejected outright at the Russian House: they ‘very politely showed me the door – we don’t need “Reds”.’59

Some of the Russian House’s more politically-involved members actively protested the

Social Club’s activity, including its celebration of the Revolution’s thirty-fifth anniversary in 1952.

The front page of the Newcastle Herald and Miners’ Advocate detailed the unrest, as men and women from both clubs faced off on the street in ‘orderly’ conflict.60 Anatoly Konovets, a ranking member of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS), the international anti-communist activist group which reportedly organised the protest, was interviewed by the paper and stated that he overheard ‘a Communist ... telling other Communists not to start trouble “because it would be bad publicity”.’61 Konovets, also active in the Russian Scouts movement, had arrived in Australia from

China via Tubabao and was a leading member of the Russian House.62 The political conflict and

58 NAA:A6119, 192: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954. 59 Her unusual trajectory of displacement may have attributed to her rejection – born in Russia, she spent much of her childhood in China and completed her schooling there. She returned to the Soviet Union, but was an alien there, as kitaistsy (Chinese). She then emigrated to Australia at her sister’s invitation and after being turned away by the Russian House, joined the Russian Social Club, which accepted her, apparently without question. She went on to become an important part of its Women’s Committee. “50 let v Avstralii, mnogo eto ili malo? Lidiia Savva raskazyvaet o svoei zhizni,” Avstraliada, 69 (October 2011): 27–30. 60 “Free Russian Protest on Communism,” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, 8 November 1952, 1. The Sydney Morning Herald included a photo of the demonstrators, under the headline “Anti-Communist Demonstration,” with only a short caption describing events, see: 8 November 1952, 3. Tribune, the CPA’s paper, claimed to have information that the demonstration was triggered by American influence among pro-fascist migrants. Though there were certainly some Fascist-sympathisers among the members of NTS, Tribune does not explain how the American influence was transmitted to migrants in Australia. See: “Yank money for pro-fascist migrants here,” Tribune, 5 August 1953, 9. 61 “Free Russian Protest,” Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, 8 November 1952, 1. 62 Konovets also co-authored a number of the Russian House’s publications, and the Masters dissertation referenced above. 45

identity struggles of the two clubs boiled over onto the streets of Cold War Sydney occasionally in this, and other instances of public disturbance on George Street and down to the Domain.63

Other instances of conflict were more covert. The Social Club, even with its jazz band and regular dances which often ran late, received few complaints from the general public.64 The only complaint which made its way to licencing authorities was a letter signed simply ‘Loyal Russian,’ which begged, on behalf of all loyal Russians in Sydney, that action be taken to stop the film screenings occurring at the club.65 While the identity of the letter-writer remains a mystery, there seems not unlikely that it originated with the ‘Loyal Russians’ across the road. And the Social Club seems to have suspected that members of the Russian House were making moves against them.

When an ambiguously controversial DP named Fedia attended the Club one evening in 1951, he was greeted rather shortly: Tamara English approached him and ‘told him he had no business to be at the club with his political views.’ The Pakhomovs, the TASS representative and his wife, also shunned the young man; Ivan Pakhomov told Fedia ‘he did not want to know him,’ and Anna

Pakhomova refused to shake his hand. When Tamara discussed the incident later with Augusta

Klodnitskaya, the president told her ‘these people were being sent to the club deliberately for sabotage purposes.’66 While there is nothing further in ASIO’s files on this Fedia, Klodnitskaya’s theory was perhaps not so far-fetched. Members of NTS, the anti-Bolshevik group with which

Konovets was involved, had approached ASIO during 1951 and 1952 to assist Australian intelligence in combatting local communists and ASIO began cultivating a relationship with the group.67 NTS handed over documents to ASIO and attempted their own covert anti-communist

63 “More Domain Provocation: Hooligans attack pregnant woman, maimed ex-Digger,” Tribune, 19 May 1954, 2. 64 In both June 1950 and December 1952, police officers noted that no complaints had been recorded, the club was ‘well-conducted’ and its patrons ‘apparently respectable citizens.’ NSWSA: NRS-15318, [17/3620.1]- 17/3620.1[DUP2]: W.R. Jones Sergeant 3rd Class to Officer in Charge of Police No. 2 Division, 15 December 1952; J.E. Mannion, Senior Constable, to Officer-in-Charge of Police, No. 2 Division, 7 June 1950. 65 NSWSA: NRS-15318, [17/3620.1]-17/3620.1[DUP2]: 'Loyal Russian' to Chief Secretary, Local Government, 2 February 1950. 66 NAA:A6119, 7043, ‘DUKIN, Alexander Volume 1’: Extract Report from R/D, NSW, 9 October 1951. It’s not clear exactly what was wrong with Fedia’s politics, but it seems likely that he attended the other club or was perhaps involved with NTS or the Russian Fascist movement. 67 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 483-4. 46

work, so it’s conceivable that they attempted to cause trouble, if not actually infiltrate, the pro-

Soviet club just across the street from where some of their members socialised.

With all of this attention directed across the street, it is thus striking that the anti- communist community’s historical accounts of Russians in Sydney only occasionally acknowledge the presence of the Russian Social Club. The Russian-language journal Avstraliada throughout eighty issues includes only one article on the Russian Social Club, which provoked an annoyed reply from a reader.68 Other Russian-language texts mention the Social Club fleetingly, but do not reflect the conflict between the clubs nor the sustained concern regarding the presence of left- wing émigrés across the road which was evident in the 1950s.69 Thus, the small number of Russian- speakers on both sides of George Street acted out the politico-cultural anxieties of the Cold War in the 1950s.

The Russian Social Club’s activities included observing Soviet holidays, welcoming Soviet visitors, celebrating Soviet culture, and supplying the latest Soviet journals and pamphlets via its library. Alongside members of the Australian-Russian Society, the club celebrated Stalin’s birthday in 1946 with a cabaret dance and a three-tier birthday cake.70 In early Cold War Australia, this was dangerous territory. The Menzies government attempted to ban the CPA during this era – a prohibition which seemed likely to impact other left-wing organisations like the club. The committee discussed the potential necessity of retreating underground, worried the club would be labelled a communist ‘front’ and outlawed or supressed.71 Even the progressives on the committee were concerned about a possible ban – though they didn’t think laying low was the answer – and

68 Mr. M. N. Churkin wrote a reply to correct a ‘large inaccuracy, to say the least,’ that the Ensemble of Russian Singers had performed at the Russian Social Club in 1995, asserting that their sole concert in Sydney had been at another (anti-communist) Russian society. “Obshchestvennye Organnizatsii: Russkii obshchestvennyi klub v Sidnee,” Avstraliada; Letter to the Editor by M. N. Churkin, Avstraliada, 52 (2007). 69 Natalya Melnikova, Istoriia͡ russkikh v Avstralii. Tom. 4. Russkia͡ letopis' i eë geroĭ (Sydney: Australiada, 2013), 18; Avramenko et. al., Russkie zhenshchiny, 73-7; Russkie v Avstralii (Sydney: Avstraliada, 2008), 200. By contrast, there are whole volumes on the anti-communist Russian House (which make no mention of the Social Club), see: Natalya Melnikova, Istoriia͡ Russkogo Kluba v Sidnee (Sydney: Australiada, 2015); P. A. Sukhatin, ed., Zhurnal Zolotogo IUdilei͡ a,͡ Sidneiskogo Russkogo Kluba 1924–1974 (Sydney: Russian Club Ltd., 1974). 70 “Stalin’s Birthday Will be Celebrated,” Tribune, 13 December 1946, 6. 71 NAA:A6122, 2799: Memorandum, 4 July 1951. 47

according to reports provided to ASIO, the club developed a contingency plan, involving a new constitution and name and the possibility of establishing ‘a normal night-club’ under cover of which they could continue pro-Soviet activity.72 They never needed it: the referendum was narrowly defeated, and the claims of the club’s progressives justified, for the moment. But they were perhaps lucky; Marx House in Sydney had to be closed and Australia-Soviet House (home to the Australian-Russian Society in Melbourne) was sold during this period, but the Social Club survived, continuing to operate without significant disruption.73

The club was close to the heart of the communist and union movements in Sydney’s CBD.

It frequently shared its space with left-wing organisations, leasing the basement to the Australian-

Russian Society (later the Sydney branch of the Australia Soviet Friendship Society), the Greek

Club, and occasionally the CPA for events.74 ASIO read this as a sign that the club was accepted by the pro-communist Left.75 ASIO telephone taps recorded committee members at least paying lip service to supporting the CPA, and well-known communists such as Rex Chiplin visited the club on rare occasions.76 But aside from distributing literature and room hire, the club did little to participate in communist campaigns, preferring to promote communism by advertising the Soviet

Union itself (if they cared to promote it at all), adding their particular Russian expertise to the enterprise.

Some club members were involved in left-wing organisations beyond the Social Club.

Though a few of the pre-war émigrés were card-carrying party members, DPs rarely seem to have joined the CPA, preferring to associate with other leftist organisations such as the Australian-

Russian Society or Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. In the climate of the

72 NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Communication from Spry, Russian Social Club, 10 January 1950. 73 Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril. 74 NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 4005, 19 March 1953; NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 10412, 26 January 1955. Before the club began renting the basement at No. 727 the building had been used by the NSW Communist Party, see: NSWSA: NRS-15318, [17/3620.1]-17/3620.1[DUP2]: James Roach to Officer in Charge, No. 2 Division, 31 January 1938; P. Mangin to Inspector Keogh, No. 2 Division, 20 February 1940. 75 NAA:A6122, 2801: Memorandum to ASIO HQ, Russian Social Club, 29 June 1959. 76 NAA: A6122, 2799: Extract from Communication to P. S. O. – B1 from ‘Q’ Section, 9 August 1951; Extract from Communication of R. Whitrod, Russian Social Club, 27 June 1950. 48

late 1940s and early 1950s, CPA membership likely appeared too risky for unnaturalised migrants, still at risk of deportation or enemy alien status. But these other kinds of left-wing connections were commonplace within the club. President Augusta Klodnitskaya and her family, for example, were all involved with the Australian-Russian Society and maintained a progressive social circle, including Bill Klodnitsky’s reported connections to ‘Chinese progressives’ and a ‘Red’ Chinese

Club.77 Boris Binetsky and Lydia Mokras were both members of the Australian-Russian Society, too.78 The two organisations were quite connected: they held joint-events and prominent members of the Society were often seen at the Club, so there were social connections between many of the groups’ members.79 Both organisations were in ASIO’s sights, and membership or association could be enough to deem one ‘adversely recorded.’80 ASIO’s officers didn’t always look carefully for evidence of personal convictions and active involvement. The decision to frequent the Social

Club, knowing what its politics were, was often seen as a political commitment which made a migrant’s loyalty questionable.

Perhaps even more dangerous than association with left-wing organisations, in Cold War terms, was the club’s relationship with officials of the Soviet Embassy and TASS. The Embassy’s level of support varied, depending on Australian and Soviet political climates, and whispered

77 Bill (Valentine) Klodnitsky had, incidentally, served with the AIF during the Second World War as an intelligence clerk, working in Darwin and Brisbane on breaking Japanese codes. After the war, he went from intelligence officer to intelligence subject: he was reported as attempting to convince other servicemen to join the Communist Party and as being a communist agitator while studying at the University of Sydney. He also appears to have facilitated the Sydney Chinese community’s access to Soviet Films. NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Sydney File of 41/15 Klodnitsky, Mrs Augusta “B.P.” Report, 12 October 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to P.S.O. B.2, Activities of the Members of the Russian Social Club, 17 November 1950; NAA:A6119, 6894, ‘KLODNITSKY- CLAUDE, Bill Volume 1’: Extract from Memo of 19/2/47, Communism – A.M.F., 20 March 1947; NAA:A6119, 6894: Extract, Sydney University Services Club, 6 November 1950; NAA:A6119, 6894: [Redacted] to PSO B2, Bill Klodnitsky-Claude, Associates of, 18 December 1950; NAA: B883, NX145849, ‘KLODNISKY-CLAUDE VALENTINE: Service Number NX145849: Date of birth – 01 Jan 1920: Place of Birth – NOVOROSISK RUSSIA: Place of enlistment – DUBBO NSW: Next of Kin – KLODNISKY-CLAUDE GEORGE’; Doug & Nell Pyle, The Ultra Experience: Service with the Central Bureau Intelligence Corps (Sydney: Australian Military History Publications, 2006), 52; 104. 78 NAA:A6126, 1414, ‘BINETSKY, Boris Nicholas’: File note, BINETSKY Boris, 31 March 1959; NAA:A6119, 4717, ‘Mokras, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 4’: S.O. Aliens to O.I.C. Aliens, Assessments: Jyotikana Ray, 10 July 1968. 79 NAA:A6112, 2799: W. McKay Report, Russian Social Club, 17 July 1950; J. Baker Report, 12 April 1950. 80 NAA:A6122, 2801: Memorandum, 29 June 1959. Regarding the implications of being ‘adversely recorded,’ see also, Phillip Deery, “‘Dear Mr. Brown’: Migrants, Security and the Cold War,” History Australia 2, 2 (2005): 40–5. 49

rumours about the presence of ‘security men.’81 Soviet officials routinely appeared at club events during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Vladimir Petrov was a frequent patron when he visited

Sydney, which was often.82 And the successive TASS representatives – Feodor Nosov, Ivan

Pakhomov, and then Viktor Antonov – were a fixture at club events. In part, these were social visits, as there were few places outside the Embassy compound in Canberra where these officials were welcome.83 They were also an important part of the officials’ repatriation efforts; both Petrov and Anatoly Gordeev, a military intelligence man working for the Soviet Repatriation Agency, found the club a useful place to initiate contact with potentially interested migrants.84 Finally, the club was likely useful for intelligence gathering for the substantial proportion of these officials who were working in some capacity for a Soviet intelligence service – particularly the TASS men.85 Both

Nosov and Pakhomov were reprimanded by Moscow for their lack of results on the intelligence front, and attending the club likely gave them at least a few bits and pieces they could include in their reports.86

In some instances, it appears that the Embassy did influence the club, enhancing ASIO’s suspicion that it was taking orders from Moscow. Embassy officials occasionally influenced decisions on promotion within the club and on hiring their rooms to other left-wing organisations.

They also effectively controlled the supply of Soviet films, which were a significant source of

81 NAA:A6112, 2799: Extract from ‘Fairmile,’ 14 July 1952; NAA:A6112, 2800: G. Ritenbergs Statement, 20 September 1954. 82 NAA:A6122, 2799: Memorandum to DG, Function for Soviet Citizens and Selected Members of Russian Social Club Committee on 18th November 1951, 29 November 1951; Memorandum to DG ASIO, Vassily Gvozdetsky, Contact with Soviet Embassy, 29 August 1951. 83 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts among ‘Displaced Persons’ Resettled in Australia, 1950-53,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, 1 (2017): 51. 84 NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to ASIO HQ (B1) (2), Russian Social Club Sydney, 1 May 1951; NAA:A6122, 2800: V. Petrov Statement, Mrs Klodnitsky, 7 February 1955; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from NSW Letter, 31 October 1951; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report from R/D NSW, 31 October 1951; NAA: A6122, 2799: Memorandum to DG ASIO, 29 August 1951; NAA:A6122, 2801: Report No. 30481, Stephen Andreev, 30 October 1958. See also Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation.” Interestingly, ASIO’s files on the Russian Social Club do not mention Gordeev’s presence in the club even once, though other sources confirm that he attended on multiple occasions. 85 Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1987), 3; David McKnight, “Rethinking Cold War History,” Labour History 95 (2008): 189. 86 NAA:A6119, 1247/REFERENCE COPY: Statement by V. Petrov, 12 September 1954; Manne, The Petrov Affair, 27. 50

revenue for the club.87 Generally, though, Embassy officials supported the Social Club’s film screenings, as they attracted large crowds and promoted the Soviet Union. Films obtained through official channels were subject to the Australian censor, so where possible, the club and Embassy worked together to covertly obtain uncensored films.88 Augusta Klodnitskaya relished these opportunities and was particularly excited when, in 1950, Pakhomov informed her that a Soviet ship docked in Sydney had at least three uncensored Soviet films on board. She planned to show them to an exclusive audience in a separate, darkened room of the club.89 They visited the ship together, officially to welcome the sailors to Sydney and invite them to the club, but also to covertly obtain this bounty of uncensored films.90 Welcoming Soviet ships was commonplace, and the sailors’ visits to the club were celebrated occasions – a chance to speak with other Russians and hear news from the homeland.91 Something similar is evident in the club’s ongoing relationship with successive Soviet officials. It was not what ASIO suspected: a subversive alliance wholly conceived to undermine Australia’s security. Rather, the partnership reflected a diasporic community which sought interaction and approval from its Soviet homeland, along with the resources which the Embassy could provide.

Relations between the officials and the club was not always so agreeable, however.

Unsolicited phone-calls from the club to the Embassy, when the Soviets’ concerns about ASIO surveillance ran high, were met with cold annoyance.92 And the irritation could be reciprocated.

After Antonov replaced Pakhomov as the TASS representative, a phone tap recorded a woman

87 NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to P.S.O. B.2, 17 November 1950; NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 17789, Kulka, 23 January 1957. 88 NAA:A6112, 2799: Report, Klodnitsky, Mrs. Augusta, 12 October 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from A. Hill Report, 24 April 1953; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 315, 11 February 1952; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 287, 7 February 1952; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Communication to P.S.O. – B.2, Screening of the Soviet Films at the Residence of Mr & Mrs Klodnitsky, 11 December 1950; NAA:A6122, 2800: V.M. Petrov Statement, Klodnitsky, 31 August 1954. 89 NAA:A6122, 2799: Bob Kelly Report, Screening of the Soviet Films at the residence of Mr & Mrs Klodnitsky, 11 December 1950. 90 NAA:A6122, 2799: Bob Kelly Report, Activities of the Members of the Russian Social Club, 19 December 1950. 91 It was also rumoured that in 1959 at least one Soviet captain refused his sailors permission to visit private homes or the Russian Social Club while in Sydney, though exactly what sparked this decision is unclear. NAA:A6112, 2801: Report No. 37883, Visiting Russian Ship, “Dmitry Donskoy,” 14 September 1959. 92 NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to ASIO HQ (B2), Russian Social Club, 21 March 1951. 51

conveying to Antonov the committee’s displeasure at his failure to present himself at the club since arriving in Sydney. Antonov scrambled for excuses, saying his wife had been unwell, and she remarked (according to ASIO) ‘sardonically’: ‘we imagined that there was something wrong,’ and

‘we know perfectly well when you arrived.’ Thus, ASIO deduced, ‘the management of the Russian

Social Club is informed regarding movements of Soviet officials.’93 The presence of Embassy officials added legitimacy to the club’s claim to the title of the Soviet diaspora – the Soviets were unlikely to visit (or indeed, be welcome at) the Russian House, so they remained an exclusive feature of the Social Club. Further, they could be an added attraction for migrant visitors seeking information regarding their families or visa applications, and for Australian-born left-wing activists in search of socialist contacts. ASIO suspected that the Embassy controlled (and bankrolled) the club, but the Social Club’s ability to criticise and make demands of the Embassy men indicates that there was more nuance to the relationship.94 After the Petrovs’ defection in 1954 and the subsequent Royal Commission on Espionage, diplomatic ties were cut and the Soviet Embassy in

Canberra expelled. When the Embassy reopened in 1959, Soviet officials initially would not attend the Social Club, providing assistance and patronage to the Australia Soviet Friendship Society instead. ASIO’s prior infiltration and Petrov’s betrayal likely left some stigma (and perceived danger) around the club.95 Over time and with a degree of caution, the officials did return, but the break during the late 1950s saw something of a rough patch for the club.

The club’s Soviet connections, particularly during the early Cold War, made its migrant members’ dual loyalties particularly suspect. Soviet-origin refugees were potential enemy aliens in what appeared to be a coming war, whom ASIO considered at risk of recruitment by Soviet

93 NAA:A6122, 2799: Report to Senior Section Officer ‘Q’, Translation of a Conversation Recorded on Spool No. 83 at 6.10pm on 13/7/52, 17 July 1952. 94 There is no indication that the Embassy funded the club, indeed, ASIO’s surveillance suggests that they provided only films and reading material, despite the club’s hope that they might get more. NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to ASIO HQ (B1)(2), 1 May 1951; Report to PSO B2, Russian Social Club, 14 April 1951. 95 NAA:A6122, 2801: Report No, [Redacted], C.P. of A. Fraction within the Australia Soviet Friendship Society, Date [Redacted – assumed c. 1960, due to file sequence]. 52

intelligence agents – and the club’s DPs were already spending time with these agents.96 To ASIO, the club was likely a breeding ground for communists and spies, where Soviet agents could recruit migrants to carry out subversive activities and espionage.97 The security service’s primary solution was vigilance: field officers watched the TASS men around the clock, paid agents were recruited, information was collected from willing informants, and telephone lines were intercepted. Much of their intelligence came from Bialoguski’s infiltration, but ASIO also had other sources within the club (see Chapter Eight). The best informants were, of course, those most deeply and intimately involved with the club and its members, and their reporting predominantly reveals the mundane, idiosyncratic interactions of close friends – the celebrations, disagreements, name-calling, rumours, and intrigues of an ordinary community. On occasion, particularly when reading reports of Soviet officials’ interactions with club members, one is tempted to infer an unfolding spy drama, a network of agents operating from the basement club. However, based on Petrov’s post-defection debriefings and the overwhelming weight of mundane material within these files, it appears that the Soviet officers did not succeed in running the migrants at the Social Club as agents.

These migrants, of course, were not unused to surveillance and the spectre of betrayal by an informant. And amid rising Cold War tensions, the Russian Social Club anticipated that they would be monitored. The committee reacted harshly to one potential informant: they expelled an orphaned teenager whom the club had taken in, after he was found to be harbouring photographs of various club members, fiercely denouncing him as a spy.98 But in the case of another suspected informant, the committee discussed the matter and decided to leave the turncoat in place, allowing them access only to specific information (unfortunately for them, ASIO had another informant at that executive meeting).99 Under Augusta Klodnitskaya, the committee also tried to procure

96 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 260. 97 NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from Sydney File of 41/15, 14 September 1951; Communication to ASIO HQ (B1)(2), 1 May 1951. 98 NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 2951, 30 October 1952. ASIO’s reporting makes no mention of the boy actually having been an informant, at least prior to his expulsion from the club. 99 NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from CIS Communication to Director, Canberra, Russian Community: Pro-Soviet Activity, 27 January 1948; NAA:A6122, 2800: G. Ritenbergs Statement, 20 September 1954. 53

information about state surveillance by questioning a contact in police intelligence about whether the club was deemed subversive and would be subject to raids or closure.100 Armed with this intelligence, the committee met and determined emergency procedures for exigencies, which presumably did not need to be considered until the news broke of Petrov’s defection and the Royal

Commission’s hearings confirmed (rather publicly) that the club had been infiltrated to its very core.

The Petrov Affair has contributed to obfuscating the left-wing Russian-speaking community from Australia’s early Cold War history. ASIO’s understanding was that the records of the Australian Russian Society were entirely ‘destroyed on the day they heard of the Petrov defection’ and the Russian Social Club’s records likely had even less chance of survival.101 Petrov’s defection provided authorities with voluminous intelligence regarding club members and activities, and dozens of pages of interviews with both Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov litter ASIO’s files on the club.102 But following the interviews, the files become more subdued. ASIO’s primary agent in the Club – Bialoguski – had his cover blown when his identity was revealed at the Royal

Commission. Finding out they had been infiltrated must have put a dampener on things, and some members likely distanced themselves from the club. Surveillance and activity also decreased because of the Soviet Embassy’s departure. For the next five years, the club’s Soviet connections, which constituted its greatest threat in ASIO’s eyes, were only indirect at best. Without Bialoguski or the Soviet officials, surveillance became less intensive between 1955 and 1958, leaving behind reports that were far less private or confidential – mostly lists of new presidents and secretaries, and flyers advertising upcoming events.

100 NAA:A6122, 2799: Communication to P. S. O. – B.2., Russian Social Club, 13 March 1951. 101 NAA:A6122, 2801: Report No. 48835, Lady Jessie Street, 11 August 1961. The Social Club had been even more involved with Petrov than the Society so presumably would have reacted similarly, anticipating raids, questioning, or at least that Petrov would tell the authorities everything he knew about their activities. 102 It is interesting to note that almost none of this material made it to the Report of the Royal Commission – despite ASIO’s assessment was that the club could, and likely would, assist with subversive operations, the Commission certainly seemed to believe that little substantive espionage was carried out at the club. See Chapter Two for further detail on what ASIO’s Royal Commission Section investigated and what made it to the hearings. 54

ASIO still received the odd report from paid agents and informants regarding the club, which indicated there were fewer patrons and less Russian cultural activity.103 This is somewhat surprising when read against the club circulars and pamphlets which, in the years after Petrov, advertised regular Russian dance evenings and balalaika shows. The club was visited by touring

Soviet ballerinas, dancing and singing ensembles, and Soviet holidays were commemorated throughout the 1960s.104 Indeed, the club did not close in the wake of the affair and some of its members continued their active involvement despite the scandal. Boris Binetsky remained a member, despite being interviewed in connection with the Royal Commission, and even returned as club president in the late 1950s (see Chapter Two). Freda Lang (former secretary), Fred

Razoumoff (one of the club’s ushers), John Smirnoff (the other usher), and Alexander Klements

(the moderate dissident) all remained active members into the early 1960s.105 There were more arrivals from China, too, as the 1950s progressed. They had missed out on the Petrov Affair entirely and though rumours about the Social Club surely abounded among Sydney’s Russians, many still gravitated toward the pro-Soviet group.

But for others, it was the end of the road. Jacob Horowitz and his wife left the club, choosing to put their energies into the Jewish community and associate with Polish Consular officials instead (see Chapter Seven). Augusta Klodnitskaya no longer associated with the club but moved perhaps further to the left, eventually joining the CPA.106 Lydia Mokras moved toward

Hyam Brezniak, Alan Dalziel, Evatt’s private secretary, and a more ALP-associated crowd for a time.107 That so many of the Russian Social Club’s members did not leave, though, and that the club survived the tumult of the early Cold War at all is notable. Perhaps this suggests that

103 NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 11569, Russian Social Club, 10 June 1955; Report No. 12722, Freda Lang, 11 October 1955. 104 ‘Russkii obshchestvennyi klub v Sidnee’ Avstraliada. 105 NAA:A6122, 2802, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 4’: Report No. 50969, Russian Social Club, 24 January 1962. 106 She would later, from at least 1970, be involved with the Ku-ring-gai Branch of the CPA, where she was known as Tanya Claude. NAA:A6119, 6972, ‘KLODNITSKY CLAUDE, Tanya Augusta (aka KLODNISKY aka KLODNITSKII aka KLODNITSKY-CLAUDE) Volume 2’: Report No. 3215/70, Augusta Klodnitsky-Claude, 1 June 1970. 107 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 465-7. 55

Australia’s anti-communism, though influential, was less acute than McCarthy’s American brand.

But it also seems, at least in part, due to these migrants themselves. Many had experienced surveillance, informants, occupation, and indeed, war, in the years prior to their arrival in Sydney.

They no doubt knew that ASIO was watching, that the club was mentioned at the Royal

Commission and in the press. But security attention and political scandal were not enough to dissuade them from their convictions and activities on George Street.

56

Chapter Two Boris: ‘I am a Soviet citizen and so I will stay’

Above the fireplace, in the living room of their house on Rue de Verdun, Boris Binetsky hung a world map. With updates from friends’ illicit shortwave radios, he tracked the progress of the

Second World War; adding, moving, and removing red pins as the various armies shifted. His nine- year-old son Igor watched the movements of Hitler and Stalin’s armies attentively, checking the little red pins each day.1 This kind of activity was not uncommon in the French Concession of

Tientsin, China, where the Eastern Front seemed far closer for many Russian families than the

Pacific War, despite living under Japanese occupation.2 And international political conflict would continue to loom large within the Binetsky family’s private spaces, even after their migration to the suburbs of Sydney.

Boris had arrived in Tientsin in 1924. His family were not ‘White Russians’ exactly, but pre-revolutionary arrivals to Harbin: his father was one of the tens of thousands who came from all over the Russian Empire to work on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). They were part of a new colonial outpost in Northern China, living not under Chinese authority but in an imperial zone with extraterritorial rights. The railway had been up and running for a few years when Boris was born, in 1902, followed by his brother George in 1907. The parents divorced the same year and Boris’ father left Harbin, but the two boys and their mother stayed on. They did most of their schooling there, both entering the technical school and then working as tradesmen, but seem to

1 David Hulme, Tientsin (Totton: Iumix Ltd., 2001), 89. Hulme’s book is a narrative history of the Marist Brothers’ school in Tientsin during the first half of the twentieth century. Much of its content is based on interviews Hulme conducted with former students from the school, including Boris’ youngest son, Igor Binetsky. Personal communication from David Hulme to the author, Sydney, 29 July 2019. 2 Bob Sitsky, Growing up in Tientsin (Sydney: Bob Sitsky, 2015), 89. 57

Figure 2.1: Boris Binetsky, c. 1949 Source: NAA:SP1121/1, BINETSKY, BORIS NICHOLAS have been raised as men of the arts, too – George worked intermittently as a musician and Boris was apparently known as a theatre actor ‘of some ability.’3 There was no shortage of cultural activity

3 NAA:A6126, 1414, ‘BINETSKY, Boris Nicholas’: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment by SSO B1, Binetsky Family, 1 July 1957. 58

in Harbin: the arrival of intellectuals, artists, and musicians fleeing the Revolution brought a rich

Russian cultural life to the already cosmopolitan city, and theatres, orchestras, and dance companies thrived.4

Harbin’s role as a staging ground for the White Army and the influx of refugees meant that many of its Russians were committed monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks, but there was a spectrum of political activity in the city.5 Boris’ political life perhaps began here; other Russians later reported vaguely that he was ‘well-known for his political activities’ and ‘a capable organiser’ among

Harbintsy.6 Exactly what or for whom he may have organised remains a mystery. Boris set foot in the Soviet Union only once, apparently travelling to Vladivostok for just a day, in an attempt to sign up for the Navy in 1919.7 And at twenty-two, he decided to move over a thousand kilometres south to Tientsin. Around the time of his departure, the Soviets and Chinese had struck an agreement for joint administration of the CER and Soviet citizenship was now on offer for

Harbintsy.8 They had become stateless in 1920 when Chinese authorities ended extraterritoriality; some took up the Soviet offer so that they were no longer ‘citizens of nowhere,’ but most because it was a requirement for CER employees. Many others resisted, however, remaining staunch White

émigrés. The CER rule may have been a concern for Boris, working as an electrician, but his primary motivation for leaving Harbin seems to have been less than political. Rather, there was a girl in the picture – Ekaterina – and she was just about to finish school in Tientsin.9

4 Mara Moustafine, Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (Sydney: Random House, 2002), 81-2; Gary Nash, The Tarasov Saga: from Russia through China to Australia (Sydney: Rosenberg Publishing, 2002), 93. 5 Jayne Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’: Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946-47,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019): 23-4. 6 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures – Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 7 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview with Boris Nicholaevich BINETSKY, 28 March 1955. 8 Olga Bakich, “Émigré Identity: The Case of Harbin,” South Atlantic Quarterly 99, 1 (2000): 57-8. Boris later told ASIO that he had left for Tientsin in either June or July of 1924 – the Sino-Soviet agreement was made in June, so presumably he was in Harbin at the time and had the chance to take up Soviet citizenship. 9 Personal communication from David Hulme to the author, Sydney, 29 July 2019. This detail was included in an earlier draft of Hulme’s manuscript, in a chapter which was cut from the final published version. Boris and Ekaterina married around a year after his move to Tientsin, though, so this does appear to be a logical explanation. 59

Tientsin was a treaty port city of remarkably cosmopolitan character which, though boasting a Russian community of around 6,000, was a long way from the ‘Russian world’ inhabited by the 120,000 or so Harbintsy.10 Binetsky worked various jobs after arriving; he did some electrical work, dabbled in signwriting, and even chauffeured the French Consul.11 He and Ekaterina married. She was from Pereyaslav, in the Western regions of Russian Empire, and was by then working as a dressmaker. Boris settled into a stable job with the International River Commission just before the birth of their first child, a daughter named Lydia. For the next twenty years, he operated and maintained the mechanical drawbridge over the Hai river which connected Tientsin’s foreign concessions. In a cosmopolitan city of commerce, the bridge provided an important connection for British and French authorities and ordinary pedestrians alike, and Boris a well- known, and perhaps well-liked, face.12 Details of the Binetskys’ lives during the 1930s are scant: they lived in the French Concession, just a few blocks from the bridge, and had two sons (George, presumably named for his uncle, and Igor). Boris’ brother George moved into the neighbouring

British concession, where most of Tientsin’s Russians lived. 13 He, too, had married a Russian-born woman, Nadejda, and the two families visited each other occasionally. As the Japanese occupied

Harbin in 1932, many Russians moved southward, fleeing the harassment of kempeitai (military police) and deteriorating economic conditions.14 It seems that the broader Binetsky family moved toward Boris, in Tientsin, as they left Harbin: first George, and then their younger half-sister,

Helene, and perhaps also their mother.15

10 Mara Moustafine, “Russians from China: Migrations and Identity,” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 5, 2 (2013): 143. 11 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 12 Personal communication from David Hulme to the author, Sydney, 29 July 2019. That Boris was well-liked because of his role in keeping Tientsin’s bridge running smoothly is another detail remembered by Igor and included in an excised chapter of Hulme’s manuscript. 13 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28th March 1955; Nash, The Tarasov Saga, 59. 14 Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 149; Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’,” 24. 15 Helene (recorded as Helen Robert Brille-Suie nee Binetsky upon arrival in Australia, so assumedly a half-sibling to Boris Nicholaevich and George Nicholaevich) was born in Harbin but completed her secondary schooling in Tientsin during the 1930s, so it seems likely that she (and perhaps their mother) moved with the arrival of the Japanese in Manchuria. NAA:A12094, 54-56, ‘BRILL-SUIE Nicolas Ivanovitch born 19 December 1918; Helen born 27 March 1919; Nicolas Jr born 24 May 1943.’ 60

The arrival of the Japanese in Tientsin and the outbreak of war did not seem to bring significant upheaval for Boris, Ekaterina, and their children. Boris continued to work on the bridge and became involved in some local organisations, including the Russian National Club. The war was present, certainly – Boris maintained their Eastern Front map, cracked open his secret vodka stash to celebrate Soviet victory at Stalingrad with friends, there were shortages of cabbage, and economic inflation was discussed over dinner.16 But Boris went to work every day, Ekaterina managed the household, and the children went to school. As stateless Russians, they were mostly left alone by the Japanese occupation forces, if they kept their heads down.17 The Japanese occupiers had largely respected the foreign concessions when they arrived in 1937 but seized the

British and American concessions in 1941. As in Harbin, the Japanese sponsored an anti- communist Russian organisation, overseen by the Cossack leader E. Pastukhin (apparently a

‘henchman’ of Grigori Semyonov, leader of the White movement in Transbaikal), to administer

Tientsin’s Russians. Its headquarters were known as the ‘White House,’ and Pastukhin called on all Russians to register themselves there, which Boris appears to have done, perhaps for a measure of security for the family.18 The family had at least one run-in with the Japanese: soldiers stormed the house and harassed Boris, apparently having heard that the family had an illegal radio.19 Things had changed, certainly, but there was no serious turmoil for these particular China Russians.

The real upheaval began for the Binetskys, as for many foreign residents of China, after

1945 with the Chinese Civil War and Communist Revolution. George and Nadejda left for

Australia in 1948, funding their own passage when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) appeared to be gaining the upper hand, and Helene followed with her husband and young son, as IRO-

16 Hulme, Tientsin, 80; 89. 17 Nash, The Tarasov Saga, 142. 18 Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 220; Desmond Power, Little Foreign Devil (Vancouver: Pangli Imprint, 1996), 124; NAA: A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. These Japanese-backed Russian leaders don’t seem to have had the same administrative power or influence as the Bureau of Russian Emigrants (BREM) did in Harbin, due to the presence of the foreign concessions. But there were some kidnappings and at least one murder of a Russian, as in Harbin (see Power, Little Foreign Devil, 124), so it was perhaps prudent to register with this ‘White House’ nonetheless. 19 Hulme, Tientsin, 81. 61

sponsored refugees via Shanghai and then Tubabao.20 But Boris and Ekaterina stayed on in

Tientsin. They could have applied for repatriation to the Soviet Union – several thousand Russians from Tientsin and Shanghai returned between 1947-48, but the Binetskys were not among them.21

The International River Commission had shut down in 1947, so Boris had to leave his job on the bridge and found work with a British engineering firm. He joined the Soviet Citizens’ Association and the family, who had been stateless, took up Soviet citizenship.22 Boris does appear to have been caught up in the pro-Soviet patriotism many China Russians experienced during the war, but taking up Soviet papers may have been an instrumental decision rather than an ideological one.

Belonging to the Soviet Citizens Association and applying for a Soviet passport was a way to access rations of black bread, an increasingly coveted item for the Russians of Tientsin.23 Many also sought the safety of having some kind of papers, rather than the precarity of statelessness, and as the Soviets offered papers without a definite obligation to repatriate there was seemingly nothing to lose.24

They stayed, through the battle over Tientsin in 1949, sheltering in their basement during the worst of the fighting.25 It wasn’t until 1950 that the family decided to leave; George secured them a landing permit for Australia and they began to pack up their lives.26 Boris’ youngest son,

Igor, recalled packing some twenty kilograms of shrapnel and shell-casings he had collected after the PLA victory and Boris’ insistence that he could not bring it all to Australia.27 There was a fairly

20 NAA: BP26/1, BINETSKY G N, ‘BINETSKY George Nicholas - born 1907 - incoming passenger card - arrived Brisbane on Dembighshire 1948-50’; NAA:A12094, 54-56. 21 Laurie Manchester, “Repatriation to a Totalitarian Homeland: The Ambiguous Alterity of Russian Repatriates from China to the USSR,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16, 3 (2007): 358. It’s possible they applied for repatriation but were put on hold. The much larger waves of repatriation from China occurred later, during the 1950s. 22 NAA: A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 23 Hulme, Tientsin, 98. 24 Nash, The Tarasov Saga, 174. 25 Hulme, Tientsin, 313. 26 NAA:A261, 1950/80, ‘Applicant - BINETSKY G N; Nominee - BINETSKY Boris Nicolaevich; Ekaterina Fedorovna; Lydia Borisovna; George Borisovich; Igor Borisovich; nationality Russian 1950.’ 27 Hulme, Tientsin, 313-14. 62

brief sea voyage to Hong Kong, and then the family boarded an aeroplane bound for Sydney, arriving on 13th October 1950.

George already owned at least one property in North Manly by the time Boris, Ekaterina, and the children arrived in Australia. Helene had lived in the house for a time, after she and her family completed their stint at Bathurst Migrant Camp, but it was empty and ready for the elder

Binetsky and his family when they landed in Sydney.28 They likely spoke at least some English upon arrival: though most Russians in Tientsin spoke Russian at home and to each other, English was the cosmopolitan city’s lingua franca.29 Life in Sydney was certainly an adjustment for those from treaty-port cities in China, but a working knowledge of English definitely helped. Boris’ immediate family seems to have been tight-knit; they all continued to live together in the North

Manly house for almost a decade. Their eldest, Lydia, was twenty-two when they arrived and, never marrying, appears to have lived with her mother until her death some decades later.30 George, the middle child, was twenty-one when they arrived in Australia and Igor, the youngest, sixteen. Both lived in the family home into their mid-twenties, including, for a time, with their new wives.31

Boris had an active social life in Australia, at least when it came to other Russians. Someone made a report to ASIO, concerned about the large number of foreign-looking people who lived at

Binetsky’s house (his family), their many foreign-looking visitors, and the large quantities of international mail he received ‘from all over the world.’ Particularly, the informant noted that

‘Binetsky did not associate with any of the other people in Smith Avenue but kept strictly to

28 Arriving as IRO-sponsored DPs from Tubabao, they were obligated to complete a two-year labour contract like the European DPs, see Overview section. NAA:A446, 1955/430, ‘Application for Naturalisation - BRILL-SUIE Nicolas born 19 December 1918; Nicolas [aka Nicholas] born 24 May 1943.’ 29 Sitsky, Growing up in Tientsin, 46; Nash, The Tarasov Saga, 61. 30 NAA: SP244/2, N1950/2/11687, ‘Aircraft VH-EBO arrived Sydney 14 October 1950 - Passengers Juliana Samootin, Louey Kum Yin, Lam Hokit, Wang Tung Jen, Wang Ying Ching Chun, Karl Lipphardt [photograph attached], Olga Lipphardt [photograph attached], Rosalia Lipphardt [photograph attached], Boris Binetsky, Catherine Binetsky, Igor Binetsky, George Binetsky and Lydia Binetsky [Box 108] 1950.’ 31 NAA: A6126, 1414: Precis of Application for Naturalization, BINETSKY George Boris, 26 September 1960; Precis of Application for Naturalization, BINETSKY Igor Boris, 30 March 1961. 63

himself. In fact, he was considered to be a most suspicious character.’32 The residents of Smith

Avenue were still getting used to having migrant neighbours, evidently. Boris had likely entered

Sydney’s Russian community via the Russian Social Club on George Street. He began attending there at some point during 1951 and quickly became a part of the club’s inner circle. ASIO first noticed him when Dr Michael Bialoguski, their main informant there, reported that Binetsky had attended a rehearsal of the club’s Dramatic Group in August. Bialoguski described him as ‘a new

“producer”, Mr Boris Bielecki (Phonetically)…said to be a recent arrival from Shanghai where he had vast experience in theatre work … in his forties, 5 ft. 8” high, thin build, grey hair. He seems to be very much in the confidence of Razoumoff.’33 Frederick Razoumoff was a ‘bear-like Russian’ with horn-rimmed glasses, and ‘something of a major-domo’ at the Club. 34 He had been a long- standing committee member and the club’s librarian. It seems Binetsky had found his way, rather quickly, to the club’s ‘in group.’ And after attending the exclusive dinner party of Petrov’s that had caused such a stir among the club’s members, his position was cemented.

By January 1952, Boris had been in Australia just under eighteen months but was already a committee member at the Russian Social Club, and was then elected its incoming president.35 He assumed the role from August Klodnitskaya, the steadfast postwar president who had steered the club in an explicitly left-wing, pro-Soviet direction. She approved of his election: ASIO intercepted a telephone call where she told a friend that Boris ‘is a very pleasant personality, and on the whole the members of the committee couldn’t have been selected better.’36 She expressed a similar

32 ASIO thought the report was about George Binetsky, since he was recorded as owning the house on Smith Avenue, but George had already moved out to Galston by this time so more likely it was Boris. Further, the informant noted that two women who looked very ‘alike but one older than the other’ lived at the house – surely this was Ekaterina and Lydia Binetsky. NAA:A6119, 7250, ‘BINETSKY, George Nicholas Volume 1’: [Redacted] to OIC ACT, George Nicolas Binetsky, 20 June 1951. 33 NAA: A6126, 1414: Extract – Memo from N. Spry, Russian Social Club, 7 August 1951. There’s no record of Binetsky having ever been in Shanghai, but, perhaps with the exception of Harbin, those in Australia often had little idea about China’s vastly different cities. Shanghai seems to have been reported to ASIO quite often in relation to China Russians, regardless of where they had actually lived. 34 Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd, 1955), 49; NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 1’: Report from R. Gamble, Russian Social Club, 21 April 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report from J. Baker, Russian Social Club, 3 July 1950. 35 NAA:A6126, 1414: File Note, Mr Binetsky, 26 February 1952. 36 NAA:A6126, 1414: Boris BINETSKY, excerpt from Bob Kelly Report, 2 February 1952. 64

sentiment when speaking with Bialoguski, telling him that Binetsky was ‘a progressive and a cautious man. She thought it was a good choice.’37 Boris was perhaps cautious, but his leadership throughout 1952 seems not to have diverged from the left-wing course charted by Klodnitskaya.

The dissension of the previous year between the progressive and moderates on the committee was not repeated – Menzies’ referendum on banning the Communist Party had been defeated, leaving

Boris’ committee to operate in an atmosphere that was relatively less tense.

As a recent migrant and president of the Russian Social Club, Boris received quite a lot of attention from ASIO. The security service were perhaps even more concerned by the China

Russians than the European DPs, influenced by images of morally corrupt, espionage-ridden

Shanghai, and troubled by the relatively lax security screening conducted.38 To ASIO, these were former residents of one communist country who were (often) citizens of another, and relevant files on their backgrounds could not be checked. For all they knew, the group could be riddled with Soviet agents. Ron Richards, ASIO’s NSW Director himself assessed Boris, particularly concerned that ‘Although Binetsky has been in Australia for only a short time, he is now taking a leading part in the activities of the Russian Social Club, and is well known to members of the Soviet

Embassy who visit Sydney and the Club.’39 Boris did, like most of the club’s members, socialise with Petrov fairly frequently.40 He also saw Janis Platkais, an Embassy attaché and MGB official, on occasion.41 And he was one of only four Social Club members who were invited to Canberra

37 NAA:A6119, 3635, ‘Bialoguski Michael Volume 1 (Operation Fairmile)’: J. M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile”, 29 January 1952. Bialoguski reported that both Augusta and her husband said the committee was ‘strongly progressive…and they are very pleased about the selection.’ 38 Sheila Fitzpatrick and Justine Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration Policies 1947-54: The Case of Russian/Soviet Displaced Persons from Europe and White Russians from China,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019), 43; 50; 61. 39 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo from Richards, RD NSW to ASIO HQ, 22 July 1952. 40 NAA:A6126, 1414: Phillip Crane Report, 10 December 1951; V. Petrov statement, Boris Nicholaevich BINETSKY, 31 August 1954; Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 41 NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov statement, 31 August 1954. 65

in 1952 to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution at the Embassy, where he chatted with

Evdokia Petrova and met the Ambassador, Lifanov.42

But his most frequent contact, like many club members, was with the Sydney-based representatives of TASS, the Soviet news agency. Boris spent much time with Ivan Pakhomov, who was Australia’s TASS man from 1950-52, both at the club and around Sydney.43 He visited

Pakhomov’s flat in Kings Cross (which was the subject of round-the-clock ASIO surveillance).44

The association apparently caused quite a stir among Sydney’s Russians when Binetsky accompanied Pakhomov to visit the (anti-communist) Russian Engineers’ Association, where they had a discussion with the Association’s Chairman, Moskalsky. Petrov later told ASIO that this elicited a scathing critique in the (also anti-communist) Russian-language press, which excoriated

Moskalsky for even seeing the men, claiming it was common knowledge that all TASS representatives were MGB officers.45 Of course, in this case, Pakhomov was not only working for the MGB but was then its temporary rezident in Australia, and according to Petrov, the purpose of the visit was to find contacts within Sydney’s White Russian community.46 We don’t know whether

Binetsky was aware of the ulterior purpose of their visit – quite possibly he wasn’t. But considering both Pakhomov and Petrov’s distinct lack of success in meeting any Russians outside the Social

Club (indeed, Petrov reported that this was the only contact they made with an anti-Soviet organisation), it was likely never destined for success in any case.47

42 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957; File Note, Binetsky, Boris, 10 November 1952; Report on Interview, 28 March 1955; E.A. Petrov Statement, BINETSKY, 31 August 1953. 43 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo, 22 July 1952; V.M. Petrov Statement, 12 September 1954; Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 44 NAA: A6126, 1414: Memo, 22 July 1952; Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 45 NAA:A6126, 1414: V.M. Petrov Statement, 12 September 1954. Binetsky told ASIO that this visit occurred on 26 December 1951 and Petrov reported that the scathing article was published in ‘Unification.’ Edinenie (Unification) was Australia’s most widely read Russian language newspaper at the time, but I checked the weekly issues between November 1951 and May 1952 and could not locate such an article. Given the specificity of Petrov’s information, it seems likely that the article did exist, but perhaps the date (or year) that Binetsky gave was not quite right. 46 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 320; NAA:A6126, 1414: V.M. Petrov Statement, 12 September 1954. 47 NAA:A6126, 1414: V.M. Petrov Statement, 12 September 1954. 66

Before Pakhomov returned to Moscow in 1952, the Russian Social Club held a large send- off party and Boris was the ‘prime mover’ in drafting a substantial thank-you letter to Pakhomov on the club’s behalf.48 Binetsky also became friendly with Pakhomov’s successor, Viktor Antonov, though perhaps didn’t know him so well. Though both TASS men did work for Soviet intelligence, according to Petrov, it doesn’t appear that they ever attempted to recruit Boris. Nor does it seem that Boris would have wanted to be recruited. Petrov later pointed out that Binetsky was friendly but never tried to develop the relationship further or gain information about the Embassy.49 His contact with the Soviet officials seems to have been what it appeared: a connection required for club business, like obtaining Soviet records and films; for personal business, such as renewing his passport; and most often, a social connection, perhaps friendship in some cases.

After a year as club president, Boris decided to step down. He lacked time, and the constant travel between Manly and George Street was taxing.50 He remained an active member, however, continuing to direct the club’s dramatic group (which was in the leftist New Theatre style) and becoming its librarian, swapping roles with Razoumoff as the latter assumed the presidency.51

Indeed, the alternative reading of Boris’ participation in the club might be that it was largely cultural, rather than political. Boris was, according to one ASIO source, ‘instrumental in organising the “Dramatic Circle” within the Russian Social Club’ and ‘well-known in theatrical circles’ generally.52 Indeed, by 1959, another source reported that ‘Binetsky is pro-Russian, but his association with the Club is in relation to Russian culture rather than politics. Binetsky is very interested in the theatre and has produced a number of theatrical productions at the Club. He is also an amateur artist.’53 While this was probably partly true, and more than likely accounts for

48 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo, 22 July 1952. 49 NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov statement, 31 August 1954. 50 NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov statement, 31 August 1954; Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 51 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures – Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957; NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955; NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov statement, 31 August 1954; NAA:A6122, 2799: J Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 22 June 1951. 52 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures – Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 53 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 34370, 11 May 1959. 67

initial attendance at the club, it does not appear to be the whole story. It does not explain his other associations, such as his membership of the Australian-Russian Society (which continued when it became the Australia Soviet Friendship Society), nor for the club’s political trajectory under his presidency.54 The club’s library, too, was pro-Soviet under his custodianship, as was the dramatic group.55

Boris was now fifty years old, and though his younger brother George had retired to a quieter life (as a chicken farmer at Galston), the elder Binetsky remained rather busy, between his work as a mechanic at General Motors and activities at the club. It was the latter which drew both brothers into intrigue, during the investigations of the Royal Commission on Espionage in 1955.

During the Petrovs’ debriefings with ASIO, the Binetsky name came up: both Vladimir and

Evdokia recalled that in 1953 they had received a cable from the MGB Centre in Moscow which advised that ‘Binetsky, of the Russian Social Club’ had, while living in Tientsin, worked for British counter-intelligence.56 Moscow requested the names of all officials with whom Binetsky had interacted and instructed that they cease associating with him immediately.57 Petrov’s return cable pointed out that Boris had never shown interest in the Embassy or its business, concluding that he thought ‘the possibility of him being a British Intelligence agent was very remote.’ The Soviet officials continued to socialise with Boris but received no further contact from Moscow on the matter. In reporting this to ASIO, Petrov remarked that Boris had once mentioned in conversation that it was his brother who had worked for British intelligence during the war.58

ASIO decided to interview both brothers, separately. The officers identified themselves as being with the Attorney General’s Department (rather than ASIO itself), but did inform the men

54 NAA:A6126, 1414: File Note, 31 March 1959; File Note, 12 June 1960; File Note, BINETSKY Boris, 29 May 1959. 55 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Richmond Report, Russian Social Club, 14 April 1950; NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 40563, Nicolai Piankoff, 26 February 1960; NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 51482, Russian Social Club, 6 March 1962. Boris was even reported as purging the library of books containing favourable references to Stalin after Khrushchev’s secret speech. 56 NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov Statement, 31 August 1954; E. A. Petrov Statement, 31 August 1954. 57 NAA:A6126, 1414: Letter from Ron Richards to Mr. Carter & Mr. Redford, Klodnitsky – Binetsky, 24 July 1954. 58 NAA:A6126, 1414: V. Petrov Statement, 31 August 1954. Petrov did not clarify whether this conversation occurred before or after he cabled Moscow and I have found no other evidence which elucidates this timeline. 68

that they were being interviewed in connection with the Royal Commission on Espionage and summarised the Petrovs’ information for them.59 Boris and George both cooperated with the interview process, but where the officers noted that Boris ‘agreed to answer questions,’ George offered to assist ‘in any way possible.’60 Boris was not outwardly recalcitrant, but given his past associations with Soviet officials (whom he now knew were indeed spies), one imagines that, having been interrupted during his work day to be interviewed by security men in his boss’s office, he was at least mildly concerned. George’s contributions recorded at his home in Galston, however, appear rather enthusiastic.61

George Binetsky had begun a career with the Tientsin British Police Force only a few months after arriving there in 1930. He worked in some branch of police intelligence, gathering information on both the Japanese-sponsored anti-communist organisations and the Soviet

Consulate.62 George had likely taken up Soviet papers in Harbin but secured British naturalisation around the outbreak of the Second World War, in what the British Home Office deemed an exceptional case based on ‘the nature of services [he] performed.’63 He was promoted to inspector, but in 1941, enlisted with the British army. He was posted to Burma, then India, was seconded to the US Army as a Chinese interpreter and wound up back in Burma doing intelligence work – running agents and operating transmitters.64 British citizenship didn’t work out so well for his wife,

Nadejda, who was interned under the Japanese, but both made it back to Tientsin after the war.

George returned to the police force, now run by Chinese Nationalists, to work in an advisory

59 Though George was informed that Boris had been interviewed and had suggested that Petrov’s information pertained to George rather than himself, neither was told that Petrov had cabled Moscow suggesting this explanation. 60 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955; Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 61 NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955; Memo for RD NSW, Binetsky family, 25 June 1957; Handwritten note for RD NSW, BINETSKY George Boris, Application for Naturalisation, 18 October 1960. 62 NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 63 George told ASIO he had worked as a technician with the CER at one point between 1924 and 1930, so assumedly must have taken up the Soviet citizenship required for the job at this time. NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955; National Archives of the UK (hereafter TNA): FO 372/5724, British Naturalisation of Captain George N Binetsky. My thanks to Sheila Fitzpatrick for this reference from TNA. 64 NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 69

role.65 After arriving in Australia, he left intelligence, working as a temporary clerk for the

Department of Immigration, where he visited arriving migrant ships, ‘being more or less a screening agent.’66 George didn’t really mix with other Russians in Sydney, but while working at

Immigration had apparently paid close attention to the movements and histories of particular new migrants, anxious that the foreign criminals he had formerly investigated in Tientsin should not enter Australia.67 Old habits die hard, it seems, and one wonders if being interviewed by security men during the Petrov Affair was a nostalgic glance at a former life for the then hobby farmer.

Boris, in his interview, denied ever conducting intelligence work for anyone, suggesting, like Petrov, that the Soviets had likely confused him with his brother. When asked how Moscow might have known about the family’s intelligence connection, Boris admitted to telling Petrov about his brother’s former career. He also suggested that they might have found out via the

Chinese authorities, or the pro-Soviet criminals whom George had arrested. George’s statements corroborated his brother’s, though seemingly due to pride in his work rather than fraternal defensiveness, stating that:

he had no knowledge of … Boris ever being engaged in any intelligence work and that in view of

the fact that he, himself, had given valuable service to both British and Chinese [Nationalist]

intelligence services before, during and after the Second World War, he is of the opinion that the

relevant portions of Petrov’s statement referred to him.68

But unbeknownst to both brothers, it seems, there was another party involved. Four years earlier, another recently arrived China Russian had approached authorities with an intriguing story. Just

65 Greg Leck, Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China 1941-1945 (Bangor: Shandy Press, 2006), 657; NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicolas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 66 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report by [Redacted], Field Officer, for P.S.O. B2, The Binetsky Family, n.d. Interestingly, this Field Officer also incorrectly reported that George worked for the Shanghai Police. ASIO seems not to have distinguished between Chinese cities particularly well when it came to their Russian migrants’ backgrounds. 67 NAA:A6119, 7250: OIC ACT to Director NSW, 19 April 1951; [Redacted] to OIC ACT, George Binetsky, 19 June 1951. George’s main concern seems to have been criminal behaviour rather than politics but as Boris later reported, he had investigated both pro-Soviet criminals and those involved with the (often pro-Fascist) Japanese-sponsored White House – and he would have likely known that these groups were of interest to ASIO. His former boss at Immigration reported that George was ‘highly intelligent and astute.’ 68 NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 70

prior to leaving China, he claimed to have been detained by the Chinese Communist police and threatened with repatriation to the Soviet Union – they would release him, they said, only if he agreed to spy for them, to obtain information on people travelling from Australia to China from none other than George Binetsky.69 But other than speaking with George’s former boss at the

Department of Immigration, ASIO seem not to have investigated him at the time: he had left the government job and a chicken farmer in Galston was assumedly unlikely to be of much use for espionage. It was only with the Royal Commission investigations that the incident got a second look.

After interviewing both brothers, Ron Richards, ASIO’s NSW Director, began marshalling information. He went back to Petrov for more details on how the Soviet Security apparatus interacted with and operated in China. Specifically, Petrov was asked about whether British and

American intelligence assets would be able to leave China if their cover was blown, and about

Chinese and Soviet recruitment practices among the China Russians.70 Describing Petrov’s information as ‘informed comment,’ Richards assessed that it was more likely that Soviet agents would arrive among Soviet citizens from China than from Europe, though conceded both were possible.71 When the initial story about George had appeared, in mid-1951, Boris was not yet on

ASIO’s radar (and indeed, they appear not to have connected the two brothers until the Petrov debriefing). George was naturalised and lived an apparently quiet, pastoral existence. Boris was another story entirely. Placing these pieces together, it must have seemed evident to Richards that there was a risk that one or both of the brothers had been recruited or coerced, particularly if

George’s intelligence work had been exposed, and sent to Australia to spy for Chinese and/or

69 He was to transmit the information back to Chinese intelligence by clandestine messaging using markings in technical textbooks. His parents, and his wife’s parents, were still in China and were threatened with harm if he did not cooperate. NAA:A6119, 7250: F.G. Murray, Investigator, to Deputy Director, Sydney, George A. D'Avaugour, 28 February 1951. 70 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo, Liaison between Soviet and Chinese State Security Services, 29 March 1955. 71 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo, 29 March 1955. 71

Soviet intelligence.72 He determined that ‘The possible link between the two intelligence services

[Soviet and Chinese] was, to my mind, in the Binetsky brothers, both of whom are of White

Russian origin from China,’ concluding his memorandum to the Senior Counsel: ‘If it affects the decision not to present the case before the Commission … your early advice would be appreciated.’73

These sorts of incidents have a frustrating tendency to remain unresolved in ASIO’s files.

The Binetsky brothers’ case did not make it to the Royal Commission but ASIO continued to monitor them, so it seems they did not think Boris or George absolved, either. In George’s case it seems to have been passive: they did a security check when he appeared as accommodation guarantor on a landing permit application (but decided he was fine), and directed the MI5 Liaison

Officer not to destroy his Binetsky files, as they had ‘a continuing interest in both brothers.’74 But they seem to have thought that George was essentially fine, even a good type of migrant. The

Liaison Officer noted that one of ASIO’s earlier assessments stated that ‘George was a loyal citizen of Australia in every way, but no such view was expressed in respect of his brother Boris.’75 Perhaps a migrant with intelligence connections could never be entirely trusted and particularly so in the case of China Russians, whose links to Communist China and Soviet Russia made them suspect twice over. But George, a naturalised Briton who seemed to live a rather quiet life, went pretty close.

72 And it wasn’t just ASIO who put these pieces together – a later informant reported that they had thought it suspicious when Boris was able to leave Tientsin without issue, given that ‘George Binetsky was an enemy of the Chinese people,’ see: NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo for RD NSW from DG, 25 June 1957. 73 Boris was asked if he knew George D’Avaugour, the China Russian man who had approached ASIO with the story about being recruited by Chinese police, and Boris admitted that he had known him as a child in Tientsin but had not seen him in Australia. George Binetsky does not appear to have been asked about him at all. NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo for Senior Counsel from Ron Richards, DDG (Operations), George A. D'Avaugour, 29 March 1955. 74 NAA:A6119, 7250: RD NSW to ASIO HQ, George Nicholas Binetsky, Accommodation Guarantor, 22 February 1957; DG to RD NSW, George Nicolas Binetsky, 13 March 1957; Handwritten file note, 25 September 1959. 75 Nothing further was placed on George’s file and it was eventually destroyed in 1974 (he had actually died in 1966, but ASIO seemed unaware of this). NAA:A6119, 7250: SLO to DG, Attn B2, George Nicholas Binetsky, Boris Nicholas Binetsky, 20 May 1959; RD NSW to ASIO HQ, George Nicholas Binetsky, 21 November 1974. 72

Boris, on the other hand, apparently undeterred by his brush with the Petrov Affair and

Royal Commission, persisted with precisely the activities which ASIO was worried about. He continued to attend the Russian Social Club regularly throughout 1954, still chairing meetings and serving on the committee.76 Further, he remained part of the inner circle, elected to a special committee examining potential reform of the club’s constitution, and was one of only three members authorised to operate the club’s bank account.77 They elected him vice-president during the late 1950s and in January 1959, he was even re-elected as president.78 The club was then considering amalgamation with the Australian Soviet Friendship Society, and a source reported that Boris was ‘playing a main part but working behind the scenes’ for the amalgamation (thought it never came off).79 Though some club members left in the wake of Petrov’s defection and the attention brought by the Commission, Boris not only remained but became more involved.

With the departure of the Soviet Embassy, he could no longer socialise with the Soviet officials, nor have his passport renewed by simply passing it to someone like Petrov. But instead of becoming naturalised, Boris went to the effort of renewing his Soviet passport via the Embassy in New Zealand.80 Though he had quite possibly taken up the Soviet papers as an expediency, continuing to renew the passports annually by sending them to Wellington was decidedly less practical. And in early Cold War Australia, the Soviet passport was cause for suspicion. Both ASIO and NSW Special Branch (the Police intelligence section) made particular note of the passport in their earliest reports on Boris.81 Having a Soviet passport and associating with the Russian Social

Club and Embassy made him a ‘suspected communist.’82 Though the Department of Immigration

76 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957; File Note, BINETSKY Boris, 17 March 1959. 77 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 13910, Russian Social Club, 13 March 1956; File Note, BINETSKY, 24 March 1959. 78 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 33470, NSW Russian Social Club, 24 March 1959. 79 NAA:A6126, 1414: File Note, BINETSKY Boris, 28 March 1960. 80 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28th March 1955. And when the Embassy returned in 1959, as president of the Social Club he went straight back to attempting to contact them – though was initially rebuffed, see: Chapter One and NAA:A6126, 1414: Report No. 3458, BINETSKY - Sydney, 31 May 1960. 81 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report by [Redacted], Field Officer, for P.S.O. B2, The Binetsky Family, n.d.; NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from NSW Memo T/7/19 (783), 11 February 1954. 82 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report by [Redacted], Field Officer, for P.S.O. B2, n.d. 73

(under both Calwell and Holt) was generally unphased by China Russians with Soviet passports, others in parliament and the press were rather more perturbed.83 Jack Lang and Calwell had a turbulent discussion in parliament on the issue and tabloid newspapers like Truth lamented that with the admission of Soviet passport holders, ‘too many Russian Reds, as well as Asian yellows, are being allowed into White Australia.’84 And migrants were either aware of, or anticipated, this discourse: one China Russian reportedly tried to throw his Soviet passport into the harbour as he arrived, and charges of holding a Soviet passport frequently featured in migrants’ denunciations of one another.85 Boris, however, chose to keep his Soviet documents well after he was eligible to apply for naturalisation, despite the overtones of potential dubiousness and suspicion it carried in

Cold War Australia.

To the émigrés of the Russian Social Club, however, Boris’ Soviet passport was a marker of authenticity and a source of social currency. Augusta Klodnitskaya, his predecessor, remarked to a friend that ‘[Boris] is a Soviet Citizen, what I mean he is a real Russian. He arrived with a

Soviet passport and he has no desire to become an Australian and he prolonged his passport, so, in my opinion, he is quite a suitable person [to be club president].’86 Boris had set foot in Russia only fleetingly, on that quick sojourn to Vladivostok, but to these émigrés, the passport and his desire to keep it, made him ‘a real Russian.’87 He seems to have been aware of its social currency, too. In his early days at the club, during 1951, an asset reported that Boris had ‘produced a Soviet passport and when showing it around was overheard to say, “This shows that I am a Soviet citizen and so I will stay. We are not afraid of the Americans. I would go back to Russia tomorrow. I don’t want to work for Fascist Australia”.’88 Petrov replied with similar enthusiasm: ‘I will try to get you a visa as soon as possible. If I can’t get you a visa you will always be useful to us in Australia. Come

83 Fitzpatrick and Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration,” 45-47; 51. 84 “Asian Hordes Among Inflow of Migrants: Alarming Statistics Reveal Holt’s Jolt to White Aust. Policy,” Truth, 28 March 1954, 7; “Calwell Cracks Back at Lang,” Sunday Times, 26 June 1949, 23. 85 Fitzpatrick and Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration,” 51; 60. 86 NAA:A6126, 1414: Excerpt from Bob Kelly Report, 2 February 1951. 87 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 88 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 74

often to the Club and explain to others about Soviet Russia. Organise to have a strong Committee in the Club, which will work for Russia.’

A number of the Soviet officials were indeed tasked with generating repatriation among

Soviet DPs; repatriation costs were covered by the Soviet Union and Soviet citizenship was the only eligibility criterion.89 But the Soviet passports held by China Russians were different from those of Soviet citizens in Europe – they didn’t grant the right to emigrate to the Soviet Union, which had to be applied for separately.90 Though Soviet officials conducting repatriation work might have had some success among the China Russians, their brief was restricted to the European

DPs.91 Whether they could have pulled it off or not, they certainly talked to China Russians like

Boris about repatriating. Boris admitted in his interview with ASIO that he had discussed repatriation with both Petrov and Platkais but emphasised that he did nothing about it (as one would, when speaking with ASIO).92 He also admitted to having met Dmitri Pavlov, one of the

GRU men conducting repatriation efforts in Australia, on several occasions.93 However, there is no evidence that he took matters any further than conversation, with regard to repatriating and we don’t know if he ever seriously considered it.

Whether he wanted to leave for the Soviet Union or not, Boris did resist becoming naturalised. ASIO seemed to find this suspicious, noting with interest in 1954, when the family were almost eligible, that Boris had renewed his Soviet passport and ‘had no intention of applying for naturalisation.’94 When they interviewed him the following year, the ASIO officers asked Boris about this. He told them that he did continued to renew his Soviet passport because ‘he was not

89 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts among “Displaced Persons” Resettled in Australia, 1950-53,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, 1 (2017), 48. 90 Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 148. 91 Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc., April 2021). 92 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. Platkais was one of the officials tasked with facilitating repatriation, succeeding Anatoly Gordeev and Dmitri Pavlov in the role after their departures in early 1953, see Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts,” 58. 93 Glavnoe razvedyvatel’noe upravlenie (Main Intelligence Directorate: GRU) was the Soviet foreign military intelligence agency. NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955; Fitzpatrick, “Soviet Repatriation Efforts,” 52. 94 NAA:A6122, 2799: Extract from NSW Memo T/7/19, 11 February 1954. 75

quite certain of his future position in Australia.’95 This evidently mystified ASIO and added to their suspicions. Perhaps Boris was considering moving his family to the Soviet Union, though his son

George’s marriage to a New Zealand-born woman a few months prior suggests that they were beginning to put down roots in Australia. Indeed, by the late 1950s both of Boris’ sons had married and leaving Australia must have seemed unlikely (at least as a family unit).96 Perhaps he intended to stay, but was resisting being reclassified. Like many DPs, from both Europe and China, he had lived through shifting balances of power – variously Soviet, Japanese, and Chinese authorities – and had his administrative identity classified and reclassified, often outside his control. Once in

Australia, at least he had a choice in the matter.

The issue of naturalisation was perhaps a source of tension within Boris’ family. Though he and his family did not become naturalised after the requisite five years’ residency in Australia, within weeks of Boris’ death in 1960, Ekaterina and the children began seeking naturalisation. This may have been a desire for increased security but it seems that without Boris, the family certainly wasn’t repatriating and there was no more resistance to becoming Russian-Australians. George was the first to apply for naturalisation, and Igor, Ekaterina, and Lydia followed soon after.97 The whole family’s applications were, thus, forwarded to ASIO for a security assessment.

Boris, Ekaterina, and the children had all been included on ASIO’s Special Index of Aliens: foreign-born residents considered priorities for internment at the outbreak of another war.

Ekaterina had attended Petrov’s 1951 dinner at the Russian Social Club, held for Soviet citizens and close friends, and the whole family perhaps attended the Club’s annual general meetings in

95 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 96 Igor married a Russian-born European DP, Olga, but neither George’s first, nor second wife appear to have been Russian. NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Matrimonial Causes Division; NRS-13495, Divorce and matrimonial cause case papers, 1873-1987. NRS-13495-23-422-837/1957, Divorce Papers Marama Mary Hoko Toki Binetsky – George Borisovich Binetsky, 1957; NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo from RD NSW for ASIO HQ, Emergency Measures - Aliens. Igor B. BINETSKY, 19 May 1959. 97 NAA:A6126, 1414: Precis of Application for Naturalization, Circulated to ASIO & CIS, BINETSKY George Boris, 26 September 1960; Precis of Application for Naturalization, Circulated to ASIO & CIS, BINETSKY Igor Boris, 30 March 1961; Precis of Application for Naturalization, Circulated to ASIO & CIS, BINETSKY Catherine, 30 March 1961; Precis of Application for Naturalization, Circulated to ASIO & CIS, BINETSKY Lydia Boris, 30 March 1961. 76

1951 and 1952.98 Bialoguski had certainly seen Ekaterina accompanying her husband to club events during 1951.99 From 1953, however, ASIO recorded only Boris’ attendance – it seems as though he went alone.100 Thus, when ASIO came to review the list in 1957, they assessed the family closely.

Boris was determined to be clearly pro-Soviet, due to his continual association with the Club, and one ASIO report considered that as ‘they are wife and children (now adults) of … [Binetsky it is] possible they are under his influence since all live together.’101 After two years of investigation, however, it was determined that there was ‘no substantial case against’ his family and in 1959,

Ekaterina and the children were removed from the Special Index.102 ASIO reviewed all of these details after the family’s application for naturalisation (and though they had not yet realised that

Boris had died), provided their approval more quickly and all were naturalised by May 1961.

There may have been tensions within Boris and Ekaterina’s household but there was open conflict between the elder Binetsky brothers. Boris and his family rented George’s house on in

North Manly for over a decade but in his interview with ASIO, Boris mentioned that the two were

‘not on the best of terms.’103 ASIO officers speculated about whether the issue was political or personal, surmising that it was likely both. George provided some clarification in his interview, explaining that ‘he and his brother hold different political opinions and that their relationship is strained to the extent that they do not visit each other.’104 The brothers were perhaps once close in China – both moved to Tientsin, they lived nearby one another, and certainly called on each other. Once in Australia, however, their politics appear to have diverged so far that they were no longer on speaking terms. Indeed, when George died, his will stated that if his wife did not outlive him, half of everything would go to Helene, his half-sister, and the other half to Nadejda’s sister,

98 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 99 NAA:A6119, 3635: J. M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile”, 29 January 1952. 100 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 101 NAA:A6126, 1414: Emergency Measures - Internment of Aliens Assessment, 1 July 1957. 102 NAA:A6126, 1414: Memo from Director General for RD NSW, Emergency Measures: Internment of Aliens, Boris Nicholas BINETSKY and family, 28 May 1959. 103 NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview, 28 March 1955. 104 NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. 77

who lived in San Francisco.105 There was no mention of his other sister-in-law, his niece or nephews, who lived just on the other side of Sydney.

Indeed, Boris’ story has a rather tragic ending. He continued to be involved in the Russian

Social Club but perhaps stepped down as president; his health began to deteriorate during 1960, after a heart attack. He didn’t sleep well and his family noted that he was ‘always sick and was getting worse.’106 Further conflict ensued with his brother George when the latter decided he wanted to sell the house on Smith Avenue, which left Boris worried and depressed. This coincided with some trouble at work; Boris’ colleagues at General Motors apparently ‘declared a boycott’ of him and he feared losing his job.107 Combined with the prospect having to move out of the house, the family were perhaps facing significant financial stress. It appears to have all become too much

– Boris took his own life in September 1960. His family and the community at the Social Club were clearly central parts of his life; the responsibility he felt toward both seem to have energised him at times, but also perhaps weighed heavily.108

Throughout Boris’ life, his inner world remains elusive. It’s difficult to locate his voice in the source material which remains, filtered through various bureaucratic encounters. It certainly appears that his pro-Soviet activities increased with his move to Australia, and perhaps it was on

George Street that he became politically active for the first time. It also appears that he didn’t want to become naturalised, preferring to remain ‘a real Russian’ (whatever this meant to him). But it’s difficult to know why, or whether he really did want to repatriate, or if he thought Soviet communism or Soviet values might improve Australia. His choices do say something, though.

105 NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Probate Division; NRS 13660, Probate packets. Series 4-729321 George Nicholas Binetsky – Date of Death 11/11/1966, Granted on 20/04/1972. 106 NSWSA: Coroners’ Branch [I]; NRS-345, Coroners’ inquest papers (Files concerning inquests, magisterial inquiries and inquiries dispensed with). 13/8633, 1995, Boris Binetsky, 1960. 107 NSWSA: NRS-345, 13/8633, 1995. There is no further information on the ‘boycott’ Boris described – perhaps it was political, but it may have been something else entirely. 108 He left notes apologising to both his family and to the club (for no longer being able to complete its book work). NSWSA: NRS-345, 13/8633, 1995. 78

Boris’ leadership of the pro-Soviet Russian Social Club and association with its left-leaning members drove a wedge between him and his brother. International politics and conflict again entered the Binetskys’ living room, now in the streets of North Manly rather than the foreign concessions of Tientsin. Both Boris and George were negotiating the tensions of the Cold War as it unfolded, navigating a new political culture which was increasingly suspicious of Russians from

China. Boris resisted naturalisation, choosing not to take on the identity of Russian-Australian though it likely caused some tension in his life. It certainly required extra effort, in registering his passport annually, and would have restricted the family’s access to certain benefits and rights. One might have expected Boris to keep his head down, to recede from view somewhat, after Petrov’s defection and indeed, his brief foray into the Royal Commission. But he defied expectation and the will of his extended family, remaining a Soviet citizen, continuing to participate in the Russian

Social Club, and associating with whomever he wished. Boris’ views seem to illustrate the pro-

Soviet patriotism which emerged in many émigré circles during the Second World War, but his choices defy the logic that the Cold War so subsumed Australian society with suspicion and paranoia that pro-Soviet individuals, and migrants in particular, retreated to invisibility or ‘quiet lives.’

79

Chapter Three Jerzy: ‘a bloody migrant who thinks he can run a union’

A drive-by shooting in Randwick greeted readers of the Sydney Sun mid-week in August 1958. The tabloid’s moment-by-moment account was peppered with commentary from the intended victim,

Jerzy Bielski, who emphasised the many political enemies he had gained as a union organiser and assured the shooters that ‘I don’t scare easily.’1 Jerzy was an artful story-teller and his account likely dramatised for effect, but this last phrase was more or less accurate. Political resistance was a long, coherent thread throughout this DP’s life, and after work for the Polish Underground and survival at Auschwitz, a single gunshot across Anzac Parade amid a union dispute was unlikely to silence him.

If there was a ‘typical’ DP experience, Jerzy’s was probably not it. Working as a migrant organiser for the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) was not exactly what Calwell had in mind for his new DP labourers. Nor did the trade unions see the mass resettlement scheme as an opportunity to recruit seasoned organisers from among the DPs. Jerzy’s enduring commitment to trade unionism, alongside his resistance to becoming a Cold Warrior, frequently made for tumultuous relationships with other migrants, the union movement, and the Australian state. Of all the DPs examined here, Bielski was perhaps the closest to a public figure. As a result, we have a greater sense of his politics: he wrote articles and letters, and gave interviews, including an oral history recorded in 2002. His story is illustrative of the DPs’ (often difficult) experiences in engaging with trade unions but also points to a longer history of migrant workers’ activism than is typically acknowledged. Before Greek and Italian migrants’ activism of the mid-1960s and 1970s,

Jerzy Bielski was actively highlighting migrant workers’ needs and their potential political clout.

1 NAA:A6119, 5105, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 1’: ‘Ex-AWU Man Shot At, Threats Over Phone,’ Newspaper Clipping, The Sun (Sydney), 27 August 1958; ‘Shot Fired at Former AWU Organiser,’ Newspaper Clipping, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 1958. 80

Figure 3.1: Jerzy Bielski, c. 1948 Source: NAA:SP1121/1, BIELSKI, JERZY

By his own account, Jerzy’s whole life had involved political activity.2 Born in 1921, he had apparently tried to join the International Brigades at fifteen, so he could fight Fascists in Spain, but was too young; his father sent him to medical school instead.3 His parents were both Polish

2 Judith Steanes interview with George [Jerzy] Bielski, 9-13 September 2002, State Library of New South Wales (hereafter SLNSW) MLOH494. 3 In some accounts he claims to have gone to Spain and fought, in others, he never made it there but certainly tried to sign up. Graeme Byrne, “Schemes of Nation: A Planning Story of the Snowy Mountains Scheme” (PhD Diss., University of Sydney, 2000), 229. 81

Army doctors, so he was joining the family trade. Bielski’s heritage was a little complex. His mother was Jewish, though he himself was not aware of this until the age of fifteen.4 Maria, born Miriam, had converted to Catholicism in order to marry Jerzy’s highly nationalist (and often antisemitic) father. So, Jerzy and his sister grew up disconnected from their Jewish heritage and Warsaw’s

Jewish community. He later described himself as being antisemitic in his younger years, in, as he saw it, ‘the way that all Poles were antisemitic.’5 Like many young people in Europe, the war interrupted his studies: with the German invasion of Poland, eighteen-year-old Jerzy assisted his mother, sister, and aunt in leaving Warsaw, fleeing toward the Soviet Union. He had been tasked with evacuating the medical academy’s archives, but disobeyed orders once outside the city, burning the documents and transporting his family instead.6 Jerzy’s views on Soviet Russia were shaped by his aunt, Helen, a respected Warsaw socialist, whose credentials included running an organisation for exiled revolutionaries and apparently being ‘a very good friend of Lenin.’7 Her husband, Jerzy’s uncle, was apparently a prominent Menshevik.8 Jerzy later strongly maintained that Helen was a social democrat, never a communist. Perhaps this was due to the development of his own anti-communism and his reflection that during their period of displacement in Lvov, he viewed the Soviets ‘through her eyes, after all, they were on the good side, there were no

Germans, no Nazis, no Fascists so it would only be second bad thing.’9

During their time in Lvov, Bielski was a member of the local Komsomol, the communist youth organisation, apparently not from conviction but ‘just to be on the safest side.’10 Between

4 “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants: George Bielski, 1921-2009,” Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 2009: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nazi-hunter-turned-fighter-for-migrants-20090306-8re3.html; Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 5 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 6 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 7 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 8 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 9 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. Assuming Helen was his maternal aunt, which seems likely, she too was Jewish. The Soviet Union was, at this point, a haven for many Jews fleeing the Nazis and many developed positive views of it as a result (see Chapter Seven for a detailed discussion of this). 10 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. Though he admitted this freely in his much later oral history interview, when interviewed by ASIO regarding his application for naturalisation in 1955, Jerzy claimed he had refused to join (see: NAA:A6119, 5105: J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956). 82

his strong public speaking and fluent Russian (he had learnt it at high school and both of his parents were fluent), Jerzy appeared to have potential as a young agitator and generally found favour. He took up his medical studies again, at the University. The family’s life in Lvov came crashing down, however, in a watershed moment for Bielski’s political development. As Jerzy remembered it, Khrushchev, then Party leader of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, visited Lvov and reviewed the University, where he recognised Jerzy’s aunt and uncle, having known the latter during the Revolution. Khrushchev feigned friendship and then had them both purged: his uncle executed, and his Aunt Helen sent to Gulag.11 Though his mother and sister then went into hiding,

Jerzy remembered the adventure of this early period nostalgically – belonging to a secret poet’s society and living off very little. But his aunt’s imprisonment and subsequent death left, in Bielski’s mind, a dark stain on the whole enterprise of Soviet communism.12

As the German army invaded the Soviet Union, Jerzy moved what was left of his family back to Poland. He hid his mother and sister at the family’s country property and returned to

Warsaw, where he was sworn into the Polish underground and began producing an illicit newspaper.13 But this was not to last, either. Bielski’s second political (and personal) watershed began when a Gestapo-informing land-owner denounced the family as Jews and collaborators with the resistance.14 All three were arrested: Jerzy’s twelve-year-old sister died of tuberculosis after a few years of imprisonment, and his mother was murdered brutally in front of him. Jerzy was sent to Auschwitz, alone.

11 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 12 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. In Jerzy’s recount, Helen was sent to Gulag in Arkhangelsk and was eventually released but died soon after returning to Poland. 13 NAA:A6119, 5105: J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956. In this version of his story (and the one he gave to the Sun-Herald in 1954) there was a brief interlude where he was also arrested by the Soviets for anti-communist activity and sent to Siberia, but escaped and after living off a diet of snails and grass, made it back to Poland. This doesn’t appear in the versions he recounted in later life, however. 14 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494; “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald; “Migrants Still Fight Russia,” The Sun-Herald (Sydney), 2 May 1954, 23. 83

But he survived. Bielski managed to avoid being identified as a Jew and was instead convicted of being politically hostile.15 In Auschwitz, too, he managed to find his way into the underground movement. He operated a clandestine radio, monitoring foreign broadcasts and perhaps even getting some information out to the Allied forces, eventually becoming one of the movement’s leaders after another was executed.16 He was evacuated in early 1945, with the Red

Army bearing down and gas chambers being dynamited behind them. After a short time in

Sachsenhausen, he was forced into a death march toward the Black Sea but was liberated by

Americans on the way.

Jerzy was initially resistant to becoming a displaced person. Just turned twenty-four at the war’s end, he travelled Northern Germany for a few months, seeking independence.17 Wandering into Hamburg, Jerzy was told by British authorities that he should be in a camp, but his response was, typically, refusal (‘Never in my life!’).18 He did desire emigration, however, stating: ‘I didn’t want to go back to Communist Poland, I want[ed] to go out in the free world.’19 He tried going to

Bremerhaven, to make his own way out of Europe, but they would not let him board the American ships, so begrudgingly, he entered a series of DP camps.

Despite this hesitation about entry, Jerzy thrived in the camps. He was appointed an official camp leader by American authorities and began publishing a Polish-language newspaper called

Literary Review (which he claimed had a readership of over a million people) with the backing of the exiled Polish Socialist Party.20 He became the party’s leader in the American Zone, was secretary and organiser of the Polish Workers’ and Artisans’ Union, an executive of the Polish Ex-

15 He felt this was a significant factor in him surviving – and not being sent to the gas chambers – at Auschwitz. When the family was arrested by the Gestapo, his mother begged him to say that he was adopted rather than Jewish-born, which he did, but the guilt plagued him for decades. “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald. 16 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494; “Migrants Still Fight Russia,” The Sun-Herald (Sydney), 2 May 1954, 23. 17 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 18 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 19 As a Polish Socialist, he felt that he could not return to Poland after the Yalta agreement. Joan Bielski, “Fear and Loathing in the Fifties,” in Meredith Burgmann, ed., Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2014), 138; Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 20 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 229; Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494; NAA:A6119, 5105: J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956. 84

Serviceman’s Association in Germany, and organised the International Freedom Democratic

Union Centre, which assisted trade unionists and socialists fleeing from the east.21 On top of these responsibilities, Jerzy testified at eight of the Nuremburg Trials, including those of Ernst

Kaltenbrunner, Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, and Oswald Pohl, head administrator of the Nazi concentration camp system. He provided evidence that they had witnessed Final Solution in action, having observed their visits to Auschwitz, and Jerzy’s pride in his testimony and the role it played in their convictions was enduring. Amid all this, he apparently still found time to hunt

Nazis with the American Army and perhaps intelligence services.22 Though Jerzy later said that this flurry of activity was an exceptional time which exhausted his anger and desire for revenge, it perhaps foreshadowed his future interactions with other Europeans and with intelligence officers.

Indeed, in unionising DPs, it seems that ‘the taste of this work determined his destiny.’23

Jerzy was sponsored for migration to the United States by a New York Jewish organisation and employment arranged for him as the editor of a Polish socialist newspaper, but the organisation, and its plans, apparently fell victim to Senator McCarthy.24 Jerzy felt that, as Cold

War tensions emerged, his trade union activity and his contact with Polish socialists and German social democrats made his politics suspect to some – though he staunchly maintained into his old age that he was the correct kind of socialist (not the left-wing kind who collaborated with communists).25 In seeking an alternative for resettlement, he settled upon Australia, reasoning that:

21 Richard Krygier interviewed by J.D.B. Miller [sound recording], 10-13 January 1984, Session 9, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA): 2582738; NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo 7776, 21 October 1954; NAA:A6119, 5105: J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956. 22 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494; “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald; NAA:A6119, 5105: J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956. I submitted a FOIA request to the CIA about Jerzy’s potential postwar activities, expecting a response to the effect of ‘we’ve never heard of him.’ Instead, I received a ‘we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence’ of records relating to this subject – what is known as a ‘Glomar response’ among US researchers and journalists. This is a loophole in the FOIA process, originally used where recognising a record’s existence ‘poses a foreseeable harm to national security’ (see: A. Jay Wagner, "Controlling Discourse, Foreclosing Recourse: The Creep of the Glomar Response," Communication Law and Policy 21, 4 (2016): 566-67). The Agency’s increasing use of Glomar in a wide range of non-disclosure claims makes it difficult to interpret. But it appears that perhaps the CIA have heard of Bielski, at least. 23 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494; NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation, 27 February 1960. 24 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 25 Bielski, “Fear and Loathing in the Fifties,” 138; Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 85

‘it warmer [sic.], and it have friendly government with Jack Lang, he was the only socialist I have ever heard of in Australia and socialist Labor party government.’26 Though Lang himself likely would not have supported Jerzy’s immigration, as an enduring critic of the DP migration scheme, evidently someone on Australia’s migration selection team did. He had the qualities of the

Australian government’s ideal DP – young, single, and physically fit – and he was accepted for migration with only a cursory look at his background.27 Thus, he boarded the General Black in 1949, disembarking in Sydney unfortunately just three days after Chifley’s Labor government had fallen.

During the voyage, Jerzy had befriended a Hungarian Jewish woman, Eva, who acted as an informal translator between the migrants and immigration authorities. Things must have developed quickly for the two young DPs, and though they were not legally married until they had settled at Bathurst Migrant Reception Centre, both listed themselves as ‘married’ on their incoming passenger cards.28 It seems to have begun well: Jerzy, typically, took up editing the camp’s English- language newspaper (assumedly with Eva’s help, since he spoke four languages fluently but was still learning English).29 Though a long-running advocate for assisting migrants in their own languages, Jerzy also appears to have been pro-assimilation from his early days in Australia and quickly learnt English so that he could begin to engage with this new country.30 After a few months, they managed to get a transfer to Sydney, where Eva worked as a chemist at a university and Jerzy

26 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 27 NAA:A11919, R48, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy born 14 April 1921.’ The IRO recorded his activities as a camp leader, newspaper editor, and ‘press correspondent’ while in Germany, but not his union or political work. Either Jerzy avoided mentioning his political activities or the IRO official didn’t think it relevant or prudent to include them on his forms. 28 NAA:SP1121/1, BIELSKI, JERZY, ‘Jerzy Bielski [Polish – arrived Sydney per General W M Black, 3 Dec 1949. Box 93]’; NAA:SP1121/1, BIELSKI, EVA, ‘Eva Bielski [nee Roman] [Hungarian – arrived Sydney per GENERAL W M BLACK, 13 Dec 1949. Box 93]’; NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Matrimonial Causes Division; NRS-13495, Divorce and matrimonial cause case papers, 1873-1987. NRS-13495-21-454-1333/1953, Divorce papers Jerzy Bielski – Eva Bielski, 1953. 29 “Migrants Still Fight Russia,” The Sun-Herald (Sydney), 2 May 1954, 23. 30 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 3, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. He later said that he was ‘pro-assimilation but with fairness, giving people justice and fairness,’ and it seems that his approach to migrants’ languages was driven by this imperative. 86

as a hospital orderly and then crematorium assistant.31 When they sponsored Eva’s family to migrate from Vienna, however, the marriage began to unravel.32

Jerzy’s attention was soon otherwise occupied, in any case. In the early 1950s, the AWU’s

NSW leadership had settled upon hiring a migrant organiser to begin recruiting members among the large numbers of new DP workers in Australia’s industries.33 Australian trade unions, including the AWU, had been difficult to win over regarding the mass resettlement scheme: on top of long- standing anti-migrant attitudes, there were concerns regarding potential postwar shortages of employment and looming shortages in housing.34 For many unions, an equally urgent concern was the belief that the anti-communist DPs were all also anti-union.35 To appease the unions, DPs were obligated to join the relevant trade union while under their indentured labour contracts but as growing numbers of DPs finished their two years and moved into other employment, the landscape was changing.36 Simultaneously, conflict between communists and Groupers in the unions was increasing, and the DPs’ support was a potential boon. As so many of the DPs were vociferously anti-communist, B.A. Santamaria and his Catholic Social Studies Movement, particularly, saw the migrants as natural allies there for the taking.

The Movement’s efforts met with success, in some quarters. They recruited Ted

Godlewski, another Polish DP, who worked in Federated Ironworkers’ Association (FIA) as well as creating a Polish Labourers Association.37 Vladimír Ležák Borin, a Czech, also worked for the

31 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 32 Jerzy and Eva divorced in May 1953 after she had left him and gone to live with her family two years prior (see SANSW: NRS:13495-21-454-1333/1953). She died just two months later, of unknown causes, but police determined that there was ‘no suggestion of suicide.’ “Cause of Woman’s Death Sought,” The Mercury, 27 July 1953, 3. Thanks to my wonderful undergraduate students of HSTY1089: Introduction to Australian History at the University of Sydney during 2020, who found this article while completing a research task. 33 Nick Dyrenfurth, A Powerful Influence on Australian Affairs: a new history of the AWU (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2017), 112. 34 Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015), 403; Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947-1977 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1978), 186. 35 Douglas Jordan, “Conflict in the Unions: The Communist Party of Australia, Politics and the Trade Union Movement, 1945-1960,” (PhD Diss., Victoria University, 2011), 162; 169-70. 36 Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 91. 37 Lyn Richards, “Displaced Politics: Refugee Migrants in the Australian Political Context,” in James Jupp, ed., Ethnic Politics in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984), 150-1. 87

Movement, as well as in the FIA and the Australian Railways Union (ARU).38 There was no

‘migrant section’ within the Movement but, scattered separately throughout the unions, large numbers of migrants worked for their cause.39 The AWU had initially worked with the Groupers but conflict developed between the two and the union flipped its stance, becoming anti-Grouper.40

This placed the AWU in direct conflict with the Groupers for DP members and their ballots, and

Bielski was to captain their vanguard.

The AWU had xenophobic roots, like most of the unions, and had previously barred many foreign-born workers from its membership but with its long-standing platform anti-communism, some officials saw potential in the union’s turning over a new leaf and appealing to DP workers.41

They were not alone in implementing new strategies for migrant workers – in addition to appointing Godlewski and Borin as organisers, the FIA and ARU also attempted to introduce translators and multilingual publications, though most of their efforts reflected only ‘limited awareness of the problems facing migrant workers.’42 With an organiser from among the ranks of the migrants, whom DPs might regard with less suspicion, it seemed the AWU would be well- positioned to capitalise on mass migration and fend off any Grouper-led coups.43 They approached the International Federation of Free Trade Unions, who suggested Bielski, with his prior experience unionising the European DP camps.44 Tom Dougherty, the AWU’s General Secretary, approached thirty-year-old Jerzy for the role in 1951 and after apparently qualifying ‘on the

38 Jayne Persian, “Vladimír Ležák-Borin: Cold War warrior,” in Dallas John Baker, Donna Lee Brien and Nike Sulway, eds., Recovering History Through Fact and Fiction: Forgotten Lives (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 81. 39 Martin, The Migrant Presence, 188. 40 Tensions emerged over the CPA ban referendum, where the AWU reluctantly supported the ‘No’ campaign, and increasingly sectarianism came into play between the AWU’s protestant secretary Tom Dougherty and the Catholic Movement. Dyrenfurth, A Powerful Influence, 108. 41 Jordan, “Conflict in the Unions,” 160. 42 Bill Ford & David Plowman, Australian Unions: An Industrial Relations Perspective, 2nd Edition (Melbourne: Macmillan International Higher Education, 1989), 212. 43 Not all AWU officials were so positive about migrant members, however. Charlie Oliver, NSW Secretary, long espoused that DPs were ‘not particularly good unionists’ and only joined because they were required to (Jordan, “Conflict in the Unions,” 197). 44 Bielski, “Fear and Loathing in the Fifties,” 138. 88

bloodied noses of a bunch of Communists in Newcastle,’ he began a tumultuous decade as an

AWU organiser.45

Jerzy visited industrial sites and hostels where there were large numbers of DP and other migrant workers, including the Port Kembla steelworks and the Snowy Mountains Hydro project, and wrote for the AWU journal, The Australian Worker. He had a regular half-page column in the paper where he described the union’s history, the union ticket and what it provided, and the role of local union ‘reps.’46 He wrote articles first in Polish and English, later adding pieces in German,

Italian, and French. While visiting worksites, he acted as an interpreter, translated migrants’ qualification documents, and assisted them in integrating into the union.47 He held meetings with migrant workers where he signed up new members, listened to the workers’ concerns, and helped elect site representatives.48 Jerzy encouraged workers to write to him with on any matter ‘in

English, Polish, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Czech, Slovak, Italian, Slovenian,

Hungarian, Bulgarian or French!'.49 And write to him they did. He received many letters from DPs, requesting information on appropriate wages and underpayment, assistance with annual leave, obtaining certificates of release from their labour contracts, work accidents, public holidays, and family migration. One woman, Anna Majchrowska, even wrote to inquire how she might extract alimony from the father of her child, who now lived in Canada.50

The role wasn’t without conflict. Many of the DPs were hostile, as the officials had initially supposed, believing all unions and by extension, Jerzy, to be communist.51 Others, understandably, resented the unions’ lack of action on recognition of migrants’ qualifications and improvements

45 “Migrants Still Fight Russia,” The Sun-Herald (Sydney), 2 May 1954, 23. 46 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 231. 47 Bielski, “Fearing and Loathing in the Fifties,” 138; “Industrial Paper Aids Newcomers,” Good Neighbour, 1 January 1952, 2. 48 Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University (hereafter NBAC): Australian Workers Union, M44, Roll 35: J. Bielski Reports to Mr T Dougherty, General Secretary, 24-27 September 1951. My thanks to Jayne Persian for this, and other references from this microfilm roll. 49 “The Labor Scene,” The Herald (Melbourne), 8 May 1952, 8. 50 NBAC: AWU, M44-35: Letters to J. Bielski. 51 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 2, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 89

in their often sub-standard conditions.52 In many cases, he was trying to recruit workers who were actual or potential members of other industry-specific unions: in Wollongong on one occasion he was barred from entering a worksite by militant ironworkers, and in Newcastle, too, he reported issues with other unions’ hostility.53 But Jerzy did not shy away from such conflicts. He was also prone to becoming involved in disputes between workers and supervisors onsite, and ‘on occasions he would “find himself” amongst some minor brawls and fights between’ them.54 But, often, Bielski’s efforts met with genuine success. Stefan Huczyk, a DP and AWU member working on a farm near Young in NSW, wrote to Bielski that the best day of his life was Fridays, when the

‘New Australian Section’ of the Worker would arrive, and that the paper was ‘the very best friend of him.’55 Jerzy recruited more migrant members than any other AWU organiser, and Charlie

Oliver, the union’s NSW Secretary, thought him ‘a “magician” as a result of his abilities to swell membership.’56 Indeed, the Groupers thought Bielski’s ‘burgeoning migrant worker base’ significant enough that Stan Keon, Labor MP and rising Grouper star, approached him about a push to mobilise migrant workers in the AWU (though Jerzy remained an anti-Grouper and passed the information onto Dougherty).57

Much of his appeal with migrants lay in his ability with languages – being able to speak with and write to migrants in German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, gave him currency in an industrial and social environment where migrants were expected to learn and communicate in English exclusively and immediately. Little non-English-language material was provided to migrant workers and Jerzy’s explanations of Australian industrial law and practices were understandably

52 Glenda Sluga, Bonegilla: ‘a place of no hope’ (Melbourne: University of Melbourne History Department, 1988), 29. Sluga notes this in relation to an Estonian DP who was employed by the AWU in the Bonegilla area as an interpreter. 53 NBAC: AWU, M44-35: J. Bielski Reports to Mr T Dougherty, General Secretary, 24-27 September 1951; J. Bielski Reports to Mr T Dougherty, General Secretary, 3-15 October 1951. 54 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 231. 55 This was despite the fact that Huczyk’s employer had told the DP and his wife when they joined the AWU that it was ‘an organisation led by Commos’ and the Australian Worker was ‘Commo propaganda.’ The employer also appeared to be ‘flagrantly underpaying’ the two DPs. NBAC: AWU, M44-35: J. Bielski Received Letters, 6 November 1951; T. Dougherty, General Secretary to J. Bielski, 12 November 1951. 56 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 231; 233. 57 Reminiscential conversations between the Hon. Justin O'Byrne and the Hon. Clyde Cameron [sound recording], 29 August 1983-28 July 1984, NLA: 1244653; Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 239. 90

popular among them. His multi-lingual approach and his popularity were a source of friction with

AWU officials, however. Some saw Jerzy’s efforts as anti-assimilationist; Joe Bukowski, the

Queensland Secretary, ridiculed Bielski’s suggestion of generating more translated materials at the union’s conference, declaring ‘It’s time they learnt our ways.’58 Jerzy, who saw himself as strongly pro-assimilation, thought it ridiculous that his attitude to foreign language materials could be anti- assimilationist and he continued unabated. It was this, questioning ‘the conformist stance’ of the

AWU on migrants, alongside his efforts to draw attention to ballot-rigging and an attempt to run for leadership himself, which saw him make a messy exit from the AWU.59 There was a series of lawsuits: Bielski brought one against Charlie Oliver for assault and took the AWU to the

Commonwealth Industrial Court over misconduct of union ballots, after which the union had

Jerzy charged with stealing the their foolscap paper.60 It was the weary police officer investigating

Jerzy’s stationery crimes who lamented this ‘bloody migrant who thinks he can run a union.’61

Jerzy was down, but not out, however. Having survived both the legal action and the drive- by shooting, he promptly established his own trade union, exclusively for migrants: the New

Citizens Council (NCC). In keeping with Bielski’s broader beliefs, the NCC was a pan-migrant organisation, run with his Greek partner, Solon Baltinos. Between them, Jerzy felt they covered all backgrounds: Solon the Southern and Central Europeans and he the Northern and Eastern

Europeans.62 Their subscription rate was low, just one pound per year, and they provided information in a range of languages, translation of migrant workers’ documents, recognition of their qualifications, and legal services, particularly for workers’ compensation claims.63 With the

NCC, Jerzy claimed that migrants did have their own needs in the workplace, as distinct from

58 “Migrant Claims Living Standards Declining,” The Canberra Times, 23 January 1958, 8; Dyrenfurth, A Powerful Influence, 112. 59 Ford & Plowman, Australian Unions, 213; Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 242-3; 256. 60 NAA:A6119, 5105: ‘Sacked Official gets orders against AWU,’ Newspaper Clipping, 28 May 1968; NAA:A6119, 5105: ‘Ex-union head held, Police Search Home,’ Undated Newspaper Clipping; NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation; Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 257-8. 61 NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation. 62 Judith Steanes interview, Tape 3, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 63 NAA:A6119, 5105: ‘No “Crawling” By Migrant Workers,’ Newspaper Clipping, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1959; NAA:A6119, 5106, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 2’: Intercept Report NSW/W.160/57, Jerzy Bielski, 15 May 1963. 91

Australian-born workers. He saw that Australian trade unions did not cater to migrants in familiar languages and failed to assist them in acculturating and integrating into Australian workplaces.64

They also went beyond traditional unionism, assisting migrants through accommodation shortages, with unemployment, and in negotiating marriage and housing laws.65 It provided significant services, but the NCC was also existed as a protest against the AWU and ALP’s failures, and broader Australian attitudes toward migration and migrant workers. Jerzy consistently employed the language of human rights in his NCC campaigns, emphasising issues of discrimination and ‘the treatment of migrants as mere “work horses.”’66 He decried migrants’ exclusion from both trade union and political conversations, stressing that ‘Migrants are welcomed

[to Australia] to work. But not to think or speak for themselves.’67

The NCC was almost universally decried by Australian trade unions, led by the AWU, who attacked it as a harbinger of division among workers and a threat to the general principles of unionism.68 The communist press, too, decried NCC actions as ‘union splitting’ and declared confidently that: ‘The Australian working class, which includes so many migrant workers, will hurl this or any other racial party into the dustheap.’69 The NSW Labor Council released a statement to

‘New Australian workers’ warning that the NCC was not a legitimate union, the organisation would only foster discrimination against them, and that migrant workers had a responsibility to the

Australian unions which had struggled for their working conditions.70 Even the Minister for

Immigration, Alexander Downer, encouraged migrants to join existing Australian organisations

64 Copy of article in Nation, NAA:A6119, 5105. 65 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 267. 66 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 265. 67 NBAC: Australian Railways Union (ARU), N5/844: Migration No. 1 File, 1958-1967: New Citizens Council Appeal to UN General Secretary, undated. 68 SLNSW MLMSS 2074 ADD-ON 1877/Box 32/Item [15], New Citizens Council 1959, Labor Council of N.S.W. Further Records, 1906-1982: Labor Council of NSW, Circular to all Affiliated Unions and Delegates from J. D. Kenny, 26 June 1959. 69 “Citizens Council Forms Racist Party,” Tribune, 24 February 1960, 12. 70 SLNSW MLMSS 2074 ADD-ON 1877/Box 32/Item [15], New Citizens Council 1959: A Message to New Australian Members (from Labor Council), 26 June 1959. 92

and form their own national cultural groups, but not unions, ending on a somewhat patronising note:

formation of such groups as the New Citizens Council aiming at representing the migrants as a

group is highly undesirable because such movements tend to segregate the migrants from the very

people who are anxious to help them and make them friends.71

Jerzy hit back immediately, insisting that the NCC encouraged its migrants to become members of their relevant union (even though they thought this was simply ‘buying a licence to work’) and even wrote to the UN, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the governments of ‘all civilised countries of the world with the exception of Communist dictatorship countries’ requesting their assistance.72 In response to a later complaint about the NCC’s conduct, Jerzy also wrote to his local MP, protesting:

Many people seem automatically to regard group activity of immigrants with suspicion. Had we

been an organisation of Australian-born citizens you would surely have written to it, asking for

explanation … Why must foreign-born equal suspicious?73

By this time, Jerzy was used to the scrutiny and criticism: the NSW Labor Council did succeed in having the NCC deregistered as a trade union, after which it had a brief stint as a registered political party in an attempt to contest elections against union candidates.74 Solon and Jerzy were quickly excluded from the labour movement by their work with the NCC. Jerzy’s speeches were compared to Hitler at Nuremberg, Solon declared a ‘disgruntled political and industrial misfit,’ and both were stripped of their ALP tickets. Evidently, migrant workers were encouraged to participate in

Australian unions, but they should do so quietly, within these unions’ existing structures and

71 NBAC: ARU, N5/844: Press Statement by Minister for Immigration, 14 February 1960. 72 NBAC: ARU, N5/844: J.S. Bielski to A.R. Downer, Minister for Immigration, 16 February 1960; New Citizens Council Appeal to UN General Secretary, undated. 73 The NCC was assisting migrants in lodging compensation claims with the German government for Nazi persecution and a client unhappy with how long his claim was taking went to the police. Jerzy’s letter to the MP protested the NCC being investigated over the issue without approaching him for an explanation first. NAA:A1533, 1959/1223, ‘New Citizens council [2cms]’: J. S. Bielski to W.J. Fulton, Member for Leichardt, 22 July 1965. 74 “Migrant Group Forms Political Party,” The Canberra Times, 18 February 1960, 1. 93

practices.75 The NSW Labor Council neatly summarised the position of Australia’s labour movement: ‘Migrants have exactly the same problems as Australian-born workers.’76 The NCC’s work was similarly rejected in political circles. Eileen Furley, chair of the Migrant Advisory Council of the NSW Liberal Party, saw Jerzy and his NCC as a ‘thorn in the side’ of their efforts to assist migrants.77 She described how, at a 1963 executive meeting of the government-run Good

Neighbour Council (GNC), there was a serious discussion of the GNC’s impotence at Port

Kembla and Wollongong, due to ‘the New Citizens Council completely dominating migrant workers’ there.78

Jerzy claimed that the NCC had 5,000-6,000 subscribers at its height, and it does seem that many migrants visited the NCC for its services.79 In a letter to delegates of the 1960 Citizenship

Convention, Bielski and Baltinos advertised that they had placed over 7,000 migrants in employment and translated over 2,000 trade certificates and other documents.80 An article in

Nation, a Sydney-based independent, left-leaning magazine, reported that:

every time he [Bielski] gets adverse publicity in the newspapers, the queue of supplicant migrants

outside his office in Rawson Chambers evaporates, then a few days later they are back there, 40 at

a time, waiting to see the man who understands them.81

The same piece likened Jerzy to Santamaria, in that he was ‘an intellectual leading non-intellectuals,’ and this seems to ring true.82 Though Jerzy was educated, wrote poetry, and fancied himself a literary man, he related most effectively not with other middle-class migrants but with working

75 Beware of the “New Citizens Council!” A Complete Exposure (Sydney: The Worker Print, 1959), 6; 16; “New Australians Refused Renewal of A.L.P. Tickets,” The Canberra Times, 23 January 1960, 2; “Migrants Expelled from ALP,” The Canberra Times, 20 February 1960, 1. 76 SLNSW MLMSS 2074 ADD-ON 1877/Box 32/Item [15], New Citizens Council 1959: Labor Council of NSW, Circular, 26 June 1959. 77 NAA:A6119, 5106: E. Furley to P. R. Heydon, 19 April 1963. 78 NAA:A6119, 5106: E. Furley to ‘Bill,’ 21 April 1963. 79 There were certainly some complaints to CIS about the NCC (mostly from clients unhappy with the service they had received, particularly in relation to the Council’s charter flights scheme during the 1960s which never quite came off). But the CIS also, in investigating, often heard that the NCC’s reputation was mostly good and migrants kept returning there as a result. NAA:A1533, 1959/1223: John M Lines, Senior Investigation Officer, Report to the Director: Special Reports Branch, 12 November 1969. 80 NBAC: ARU, N5/844: Letter to delegates of 1960 Citizenship Convention from the New Citizens Council. 81 NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation. 82 NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation. 94

class migrants, often those who had long completed their two-year work contracts but remained as manual and industrial workers. He wanted to champion their rights, as workers and citizens, integrating them into the community as New Australians who were valued beyond just the labour they provided. The Sydney Polish community, however, had mixed feelings about Jerzy’s trade union work. Many were vehemently anti-communist and believed that associating with unionists was, by definition, to collaborate with communism. Some found Bielski’s assimilationist rhetoric, cosmopolitanism, and work on behalf of all migrants threatening, suspicious about where his loyalties lay.83

Others disliked Jerzy on personal grounds and denounced him as a communist to harm his reputation. In one incident, the editor of a Polish-language newspaper fell into a feud with

Jerzy after publishing an article critical of the AWU and wrote to the NSW Liberal Party Secretary claiming Jerzy was a dangerous communist. The secretary dutifully sent this off to ASIO but seemed to harbour doubts, adding as a caveat: ‘I am given to understand that denunciation of fellow nationals as communists has become quite a pastime amongst certain Poles who have seen the technique work out in German-occupied territory during the war years.’84 Of course, this was partly true: IRO officials found that denunciation was rampant in the DP camps of Europe, and the practice continued to an extent after arriving (though it wasn’t confined only to migrants).85

But in the atmosphere of the early Cold War, with panic about communist infiltration rising, it can be difficult to separate which incidences of denunciation were born of genuine concern and which

83 Bielski had written articles in the Australian Worker encouraging Poles to assimilate, from which he apparently ‘made many enemies.’ The Melbourne Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism (see Chapter Seven) saw Bielski’s rhetoric as allied with their own cause, interestingly, quoting him in a letter to Holt. In particular, they liked his points about migrants’ nationalist organisations ‘prevent[ing] and hinder[ing] the assimilation of compatriots’ and noted his claim that for such nationalist groups, ‘a compatriot who wants to settle here and become an Australian is a traitor to them.’ NAA:A6119, 5105: Report by RD Tasmania, Jerzy (k.a. George Stefan) Bielski, 14 November 1955; NAA:A6980, S250256, ‘Jewish council to combat fascism’: Ernest Platz to H.E. Holt, 4 May 1956. 84 NAA:A6119, 5105: J. L. Carrick to Howard Beale, 26 August 1952. The newspaper editor, Maruszewski, also wrote to the AWU in an attempt to undermine his position there, providing a host of (sometimes odd) criticisms of Bielski and his character, including the fact that his ‘war-time record’ was not particularly ‘meritorious,’ see: NBAC: AWU, M44-35: S.J. Maruszewski to T. Dougherty, 18 August 1952. 85 Ruth Balint, Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and their Quest to Leave Europe after 1945 (Forthcoming with Cornell University Press, 2021); Sheila Fitzpatrick and Justine Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration Policies, 1947-1954,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019), 58-9. 95

capitalised on a prevailing fear. Many of the DPs had lived through forced collectivisation and purges in the Soviet Union, and genuinely feared a potential slippery slope from communist union leaders to communist government. For them, making reports likely felt as though it had higher stakes than a mere ‘pastime.’ But in other cases, informants saw an opportunity to exact revenge for a perceived slight or conflict, and Jerzy’s ASIO file is frequently revealing of everyday community antagonisms phrased in political terms.

One woman, when interviewed by ASIO, claimed that Jerzy was clearly a communist, as he had a miniature recorder he used to record his conversations with migrants, he visited newly arrived migrant ships, and placed some of these new arrivals in jobs at the Caltex Refinery.86 The case officers interviewing her surmised that she ‘told a story which amounted to conjecture on fragments of conversation picked up whilst in … [Jerzy’s] company … into which she had placed her own interpretations and allowed her imagination and unsettled mind to run riot.’87 The case officers clearly distrusted the woman’s assessment (perhaps her gender had something to do with it, given their critique) though her report may have been born of genuine concern. The tape recorder had the potential to record and entrap unsuspecting migrants, and the oil refinery would be a key piece of industry in the event of war. On the other hand, one wonders (though ASIO did not make the connection) at a possible motive for her denunciation in the final aspect of her story: that she had disliked Jerzy since an incident where he ‘made a “poor excuse” to drive her home and on the way made a “pass at her”.’88 Some informants were even willing to take matters a step further: one Sydney Polish group subjected Jerzy to a prolonged ‘investigation,’ another compiled a ‘dossier’ on his past life, and a third offered their ongoing assistance to ASIO in surveilling him.89

86 NAA:A6119, 5105: Report from SFO B1, Georgius Bielski - Alleged Communist, 4 July 1955. 87 NAA:A6119, 5105: Report by A/G SFO B1, Jerzy Bielski, Interview with Mrs. [REDACTED] – 23/8/55, 4 October 1955. 88 NAA:A6119, 5105: Report by A/G SFO B1, 4 October 1955. 89 NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of Letter from J. L. Carrick, 26 August 1952; Memo for ASIO HQ, Polish Activities – Victoria, 9 September 1952; Memo from DG ASIO, Jerzy Bielski, 3 February 1953. 96

Apart from personal grievances, the age-old refrain of antisemitism appears embedded repeatedly in denunciations of Jerzy. He was a declared atheist, having ‘lost faith in all religions’ during the war (likely another reason for his attracting the ire of the strongly-Catholic Poles).90 But despite this, and his lack of connection to his mother’s Jewishness and any Jewish communities,

Bielski was labelled as a ‘secret’ Jew by several migrant informants. ASIO recorded a source they deemed reliable conveying ‘strong rumours that … [Jerzy] is really a Jew who formerly had a Jewish name. He claims to have been active in the Polish underground army during the occupation, but none of the many members now in Sydney ever knew him.’91 False identities were a common basis for denunciation and though many DPs did, indeed, alter their names, religions, and nationalities,

Jerzy does not appear to have been one of them.92 Even if he did, it is particularly unlikely that he would ever have had a Jewish name (his mother had renounced hers after marrying his father).

Further, though he may have exaggerated his role in the Polish underground, it seems unlikely, considering his other political involvement, that he fabricated this entirely. Similarly, another informant emphasised that though Jerzy claimed to have been in Auschwitz, other survivors of the camp did not mention or remember him.93 Discrediting a DPs’ persecution narrative appeared key to discrediting their political standing and indeed, their presence in Australia: if you hadn’t been persecuted, you weren’t really a legitimate refugee. ASIO didn’t give an assessment of these denunciations so it’s difficult to tell how seriously they took them, but they were certainly aware that many DPs altered and shaped their histories for the benefit of selection committees.

Interestingly, though, in all their surveillance, they don’t appear to have noted that Jerzy did indeed bear the characteristic tattoo, No. 66423, on his forearm.94

For some in the Polish community, the Petrov Affair and Royal Commission on Espionage had thrown further evidence behind the idea of Jewish duplicity. Public revelations of ASIO’s

90 “Nazis hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald. 91 NAA:A6119, 5106: B2 Report, Jerzy Bielski (B/16/83), 7 June 1966. 92 Fitzpatrick and Greenwood, “Anti-Communism in Australian Immigration,” 59. 93 NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo for Regional Director NSW, Teizy Bielski, 15 December 1952. 94 “Migrants Still Fight Russia,” The Sun-Herald (Sydney), 2 May 1954, 23. 97

activities and confirmation of its interest in migrant communities had again conjured up the spectre of the informant, re-shaping its form in the public imagination. A former business partner of

Jerzy’s, another Polish DP, cautioned a member of the Polish Consulate: ‘There was another Jew here, [Michael] Bialoguski was his name, who fired Petrov for good. Petrov will curse him to the end of his days.’95 He continued, decrying Jerzy as ‘a liar, swindler and an arrogant man’ and mused that if ASIO instructed Jerzy to trigger a defection among the Polish Consular staff (he was, by this time, on friendly terms with a number of them), he certainly would. Bialoguski’s Polish-Jewish parentage was somewhat similar to Jerzy’s, and both men’s estrangement from the Jewish community and faith was clearly of no consequence in the eyes of some.96 The public revelation of Bialoguski’s role in the defection and long-time work for ASIO had confirmed their suspicions and further linked the ideas of Jewish duplicity and ASIO-informing.

The long list of migrants willing to denounce Jerzy, along with his marriage to the

Australian-born Joan Ward (who had attracted ASIO’s attention separately, for her own political activity), delayed his naturalisation application in 1954.97 ASIO had previously made inquiries of intelligence officers in Europe regarding Bielski’s background, when he was working for the

AWU.98 They redoubled their efforts when he applied for naturalisation and they were asked for a recommendation on security grounds. After determining that many of reports they had received regarding Jerzy had problematic origins, it was decided that he should have the opportunity to

‘give his version’ in a personal interview.99 Joan Bielski later wrote that the denunciation made by

95 NAA:A6119, 5107, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 3’: Intercept Report NSW/W.432/14, Lech Wladyslaw HOFFMAN, 12 January 1967. 96 Bialoguski’s father was a non-practicing Jew and his mother Christian, he described himself as ‘Calvinist’ on official documents in his earlier years but ‘did not adhere to any religion later.’ (see: David McKnight, “Bialoguski, Michael (1917-1984),” Australian Dictionary of Biography 17 (2007)). Bielski, too, went with ‘Roman Catholic’ on his IRO forms but had been an atheist since his teenage years (see: NAA:A11919, R48; Judith Steanes interview, Tape 1, Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494). 97 Joan was a prominent Sydney women’s rights activist. See: NAA:A6119, 4488, ‘BIELSKI, Joan Margaret (nee Ward).’ 98 NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo from DG ASIO to DOI, Jerzy Bielski, 3 July 1953. 99 NAA:A6119, 5105: ASIO Assessment Form: Application for Naturalisation, Jerzy Bielski; Report from [Redacted], Hohenzollerning 103, to D.A. McDermott, Senior Security Officer, The Hague, 11 January 1956; Director B1 Minute for Acting DG, Bielski, Jerzy, 4 July 1955. 98

the woman at whom Jerzy had allegedly ‘made a pass’ showed ‘ASIO giving credence to, and accepting and filing, information which was second-hand, inaccurate, and malicious in tone and perhaps made up by the informant.’100 They certainly filed such reports – which perhaps indicates a kind of passive acceptance, but as the case officers’ comments on the woman’s information suggest, they didn’t always take them seriously. Indeed, in Jerzy’s case, they were actually more inclined to accept his own version of events about his life.

There was discussion within ASIO’s B1 Branch (counter-subversion) about the possible pitfalls of interviewing Bielski overtly: if he was unsatisfied and chose to complain, his influence as a union organiser might make for a difficult public relations situation.101 So, there were careful guidelines around the interview: Jerzy was asked if he had any complaints, checked and signed the notes taken, and the officers identified themselves as ASIO and clearly outlined the reasons for the interview, including the necessity of migrant assimilation (Jerzy heartily agreed with this point).102 Indeed, Jerzy approached the interview not with hostility but rather, cooperation. He provided detailed answers to all questions, communicated additional intelligence he felt was relevant, and concluded with some suggestions on how they might better do their jobs, particularly in preventing communist-led strikes.103 One of the case officers concluded: ‘He is a very shrewd, capable and quiet little man, undoubtedly anti-communist and worth having on-side. Gave us good information and we can go back for more.’104 Not only was his naturalisation approved, it was a positive start to the relationship between Bielski and ASIO.

Jerzy seems to have thus developed a sense of himself as a valuable source for ASIO. This was perhaps unsurprising, after his testimony at Nuremburg and perhaps having worked with US intelligence on Nazi-hunting. This past history of assisting intelligence services, providing

100 Bielski, “Fear and Loathing in the Fifties,” 140. 101 NAA:A6119, 5105: ASIO Minute for Director B1, Bielski, Jerzy, 27 June 1955; Minute Paper for Director B1, Jerzy Bielski, February 1956; Memo for RD NSW from DG ASIO, Jerzy (George Stefan) Bielski, 8 March 1956. 102 NAA:A6119, 5105: Brief for Interview – Jerzy Bielski. 103 NAA:A6119, 5105: Telephone message from Blacket for [Redacted], Re: Bielski, J., 28 March 1956; J. Bielski Interview Statement, 28 March 1956. 104 NAA:A6119, 5105: Telephone message from Blacket, 28 March 1956. 99

information which did prove significant, perhaps led to Jerzy’s sense of himself as uniquely placed in Australia to assist security during the Cold War, especially while he was a union organiser. In a follow-up interview with ASIO, Jerzy provided a lengthy and unsolicited discussion of the various national groups of DPs, their political leanings, and which he considered to be the greatest security risk.105 On other occasions, he reported particular Poles and Polish organisations as Fascists and collaborators. This was certainly possible – there were collaborators among the DPs – but in some case, Bielski seems to have been denouncing people who were also denouncing him, so these were potentially counter-denunciations.106 After obtaining a divorce from Eva, his Hungarian-Jewish first wife, Jerzy promptly reported her family to ASIO as former members of the Hungarian

Communist Party who continued to be active communists. ASIO struggled to corroborate his claim and after discovering his former connection to the family, assessed that though Jerzy’s past record as an informer was sound, the interviews ‘cast considerable doubt on the truth of Bielski’s information and the motive behind his making the allegations.’107 The interviewing officer concluded that ‘in considering the reliability and authenticity of Bielski as a future informant, it might be worth bearing in mind [this] past experience.’108

The incident did not significantly sour the relationship, however. He continued to contact the agency periodically over the following five years. Indeed, after the Sydney Sun reported in 1961 that Bielski’s migrant trade union, the NCC, was involved in a riot at Bonegilla and was under surveillance, he phoned his ASIO contact. He complained about the surveillance, if it was occurring, and insisted on his organisation’s innocence in the riot matter.109 He did not stop there, providing his own assessment of who might have incited the demonstration (despite not having

105 The report unfortunately doesn’t mention which countries were included on Bielski’s list of suspect nationalities. NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo from RD NSW for ASIO HQ, Jerzy (George Stefan) Bielski, 5 April 1956. 106 NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo for ASIO HQ, Jerzy (George Stefan) Bielski, 10 January 1956. 107 NAA:A6119, 5105: Memo from DG ASIO to RD NSW, Franz Reichard, Otto Reichard, Catherine Agnes Reichard (nee Julasz), 20 March 1956; ASIO Minute Paper, Jerzy Bielski, 26 September 1956; Note for file by [redacted], Jerzy S Bielski, 4 December 1957. 108 NAA:A6119, 5105: Note for file, 4 December 1957. 109 NAA:A6119, 5105: ASIO Minute Paper, Salon Baltinos - J. Bielski – Bonegilla, 19 July 1961; Transcript from The Bulletin, ‘Who Started the Riots?’ 29 July 1961. 100

been present), suggesting the potential involvement of his former NCC-partner, Baltinos (with whom he had recently fallen out), and gave details of a trade unions’ meeting in Melbourne.110

Neither was ASIO hampered by its earlier reservations. Officers approached Jerzy again, interviewing him at his Sydney office for information on a suspicious Polish seaman.

Characteristically, he provided unsolicited information he felt was helpful and discussed the various personalities among the Polish Consular staff in Sydney, with whom he had just begun a working relationship.111 The case officers providing comment on this interview were particularly taken with Jerzy, who ‘impressed us as being a very sincere type of person who seems to be genuinely trying to assist the various migrants without thought of personal reward.’112 They drew his attention to ASIO’s listing in the telephone directory ‘and requested him to make contact should anything come to his notice which may in any way relate to the security of the

Commonwealth.’

Despite this encouragement, there remains no evidence of an ongoing relationship beyond this 1962 interview, a shift which coincided with Jerzy’s new, and steadily increasing, connections with Polish Consular officials. ASIO’s interest peaked in 1966, when Jerzy took a Polish government-funded trip back to Poland as a guest journalist.113 Bielski’s relationship with these communist officials appears to have had, primarily, instrumental purposes: he began publishing a

Polish-language newspaper, Polonia, and the Consulate provided the kinds of business connections he required to obtain relevant photographs and articles.114 Nevertheless, ASIO continued to monitor him, in case the relationship related to politics or espionage. Jerzy later told an acquaintance that it was ASIO who ‘had dispensed with his services,’ after he had assisted them

110 NAA:A6119, 5105: ASIO Minute Paper, 19 July 1961; ASIO Minute Paper for Director ‘C’ Branch, 20 July 1961. 111 NAA:A6119, 5105: Interview Report for A/D NSW, Jerzy Bielski, 20 February 1962. 112 NAA:A6119, 5105: Interview Report for A/D NSW, 20 February 1962. 113 NAA:A6119, 5106: Report No. 1926/66, Jerzy Bielski, 30 June 1966. 114 NAA:A6119, 5106: Intercept Report NSW/W.294/62, Jerzy Bielski, 17 August 1965; NAA:A6119, 5106: Intercept Report, NSW/W.276/62, Jerzy Bielski, 13 September 1965; NAA:A6119, 5106: Intercept Report NSW/W.332/121, Jerzy Bielski, 28 April 1966; NAA:A6119, 5106: B2 Report, 'Jerzy Bielski', 17 June 1966; NAA:A6119, 5106: Extract from Fortnightly Digest July 1966 re "Polonia" - Jerzy Bielski; Judith Steans interview, Tape 3, Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 101

Figure 3.2: Jerzy Bielski visits the Polish Consulate and speaks with Polish official Bohdan Piaskowski, ASIO Surveillance Photographs, October & August 1966 Source: NAA:A9626, 333 for some time.115 Bielski appears to have believed that security services and intelligence officers had some role to play in monitoring and policing Australian society. He was committed to the principles of trade unionism and remained anti-communist, but wasn’t a Cold Warrior, per se. The intelligence he provided to ASIO wasn’t just to assist their fight against communism – rather, he was informing on everything he felt was wrong with trade unions and migrant communities. Jerzy didn’t want to see communists running the unions, but equally, he didn’t want them to be corrupt.

As he wrote to Downer, ‘Australia has her proportion of Dave Becks and Jimmy Hoffas in some trade unions … and [the NCC] will express free and independent opinions on all matters regarding migrants, irrespective of party or pressure group politics.’116

115 NAA:A6119, 5107: Report No. [Redacted], Januas Zawadzki, 20 December 1968. 116 NBAC: ARU, N5/844: J. S. Bielski to A.R. Downer, Minister for Immigration, 16 February 1960. 102

Jerzy’s position as a migrant unionist placed him within disparate communities. He was the site at which several communities coalesced: where migrants engaged with union politics and unionists were forced to accommodate an actual migrant. As this site of intermingling, however,

Jerzy was frequently at the centre of conflict and fell between the gaps of the various communities, never fitting easily into any of them. To the unions, he remained a migrant, a foreigner, his thick accent and ability with languages often the subject of suspicion. To many migrants, particularly the

Polish community, he was often too cosmopolitan, and his efforts to unionise and assist all migrants in assimilating appeared communist, Jewish, and generally dangerous to them. To ASIO,

Jerzy was a well-connected anti-communist and a keen informer, but remained a migrant trade unionist who cultivated significant commercial and social connections to the communist officials of the Polish Consulate. As a ‘pied piper of discontent among manual worker New Australians,’ he was still a potential threat.117

Jerzy complained, once, to the Polish consular officials about the ‘unbendables’ in Australia

– those migrants who were militantly anti-communist and could not appreciate his efforts in promoting balanced perspectives with his newspaper.118 But he was ‘bendable.’ Jerzy was loyal, it seems, to his particular assemblage of principles: to trade unions, insofar as they protected (all) workers’ rights; to socialist ideas, so long as they remained democratic; and to the Polish community, where it was open to assimilation, alongside the maintenance of language and culture.

He was also loyal, to some extent, to his new home in Australia, informing ASIO where he thought it was of use and encouraging migrant assimilation, as long as migrants were treated fairly. His activities within the trade union movement, his efforts to advocate for migrant workers, and his presence in industrial workplaces indicate that perhaps there is more to the story of DP’s union involvement than just the few Cold Warriors who worked with the Movement. Many DPs were indeed resistant to joining any union in Australia and the unions generally uninterested in genuinely

117 NAA:A6119, 5105: Copy of article in Nation. 118 NAA:A6119, 5106: Intercept Report NSW/W.389/28, Jerzy Bielski, 26 September 1966. 103

supporting migrant workers’ needs. And Bielski’s approach was often controversial – particularly after Auschwitz, he saw politics in ‘Machiavellian, dog-eat-dog terms’ and didn’t shy away from a fight (or a lawsuit).119 But there were DPs who had Jerzy Bielski on their side, explaining industrial law in a familiar language, advising on their wage disputes, advocating for their rights, and listening to their grievances.

119 Byrne, “Schemes of Nation,” 271. 104

Chapter Four Juris: The Latvian Repatriate

Juris Pintans had been working at the Greta Migrant Camp for two months when he was fired.

The camp officials likely felt they had little choice: the other migrants simply wouldn’t work with him, due to his ‘general[ly] contentious attitude’ and the fact that he was a ‘professed communist.’1

Even Juris’ fellow Latvians didn’t seem to like him.2 He had been working at the BHP steelworks and on the railways in nearby Newcastle, where he had joined the local trade unions, but had fallen on hard times when they ran out of work. Losing the job at the camp didn’t help – he had a wife and five children to provide for. Juris had been adaptable in postwar Europe. As a farmer who wound up a POW, he shifted his identity, biography, and allegiances where it was expedient. But as an industrial worker in Australia, living under trying conditions, he developed principles and politics of his own. Indeed, he decided that it was time to return his family to the rodina.

Pintans’ road to IRO-sponsored resettlement in Australia had been far from smooth. He arrived at Hallendorf Camp, in the British zone of occupied Germany, in 1946: twenty-six years old and single. There, he received a new identity card. He was now a DP – No. 217930 – though his eligibility was the subject of contention.3 The young farmhand had seen more of Europe since

1943 than he had in his whole life, but during 1945, he spent a stationary year as a POW with an uncertain fate. Juris reported that his battalion was captured by the British and transported to the

Belgian town of Zedelgem, so he likely lived in Camp 2227, where the Allies held around 12,000

Latvian POWs.4 Baltic nationals who had been captured in German uniform were causing a

1 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1, ‘Committees of review [of] long term residents – Greta [4cm; box 97].’ 2 NAA:A6119, 7049, ‘PINTANS, Juris Peteris Volume 1’: SFO to RD NSW, Juris and Martha Pintans, 11 July 1958. 3 NAA:A12055, 820-824, ‘PINTANS born Juris born 1 November 1919; Martha born 24 October 1922; Monika born 21 March 1944; Janis born 7 July 1948.’ 4 Vladis O. Lumans, Latvia in World War II (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 385. 105

Figure 4.1: Juris and Martha Pintans, c. 1950 Source: NAA:SP1121/1, PINTANS, JURIS and NAA:SP1121/1, PINTANS, MARTHA particular headache for the American and British authorities; while German POWs would eventually be allowed to return home, the Baltic POWs were refusing to be repatriated.5 But the question of whether they could be considered DPs was fraught with difficulty. Were they volunteers, ideological Nazis, and war-criminals, or victims, just trying to survive between two oppressive occupations?

Initially, the British Foreign Office was opposed to giving the POWs DP status, and many of the Latvians were extracted from the various POW camps and consolidated at Zedelgem.6 They were referred to as members of the Latvian Legion, which, in popular parlance, encompassed

Waffen-SS, and some Wehrmacht and construction battalions. Many had been conscripted, participating involuntarily, and some had been in construction units rather than armed ones.

5 David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin, 2020), 138. 6 Lumans, Latvia in World War II, 385. 106

Others had been enthusiastic participants, and some had committed mass murder and war crimes.7

But no matter what their involvement, being housed as a community of sorts in Zedelgem gave the Legionnaires ample time to get their stories straight and discuss how best to frame their participation to officials. The US and British military authorities eventually accepted the Baltic

POWs as eligible for DP status (though UNRRA was more reticent), and the Zedelgem Latvians were released en masse into the DP camps of Germany.8

Thus began Juris’ five year journey in constructing an identity which satisfied UNRRA and the IRO. In screening interviews, he always began with his rural childhood in the Latvian village of Rudzāti and then adolescence working for his father on the family farm, after a handful of years of schooling. He spoke Latvian, and some Russian and German, the latter two likely picked up after he left for Riga in 1943 to enlist with the German occupation forces. Pintans was careful in his descriptions of this, always noting that he was ‘drafted’ or ‘conscripted’ into the Latvian Legion, where he was a labourer. 9 Born in 1919, he was the right age, was in Riga at the right time to have been conscripted, and the Germans did set up construction battalions under the Waffen-SS,

Wehrmacht, and Reich Labour Service.10 So, a plausible story (and certainly the kind one gave the

IRO). Later, though, in the Soviet Union, he told authorities that he had enlisted voluntarily.11

Some Latvians were pro-Nazi, and many more were pro-Nazis-rather-than-Soviets so had

7 Nasaw, The Last Million, 30-1; 41. 8 Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945-1951 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 289. Though many Baltic POWs were subject to lengthy interviews on whether their participation had been voluntary before they could be released into the DP camps, this does not seem to have been the case for the Zedelgem group. Sources are scant, but according to a Latvian Encyclopedia entry collected by the CIA, the British Army released the Zedelgem Latvians in two large waves, in March and May of 1946, granting them DP status as a group without individual screening. They were subsequently screened by IRO (sometimes more than once) for resettlement, however. See 'The Latvian Legion' USSR, translation of article from Latvju Enciklopedija, Vol. 34, Stockholm, 1952, p. 1288-1322, CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, Special Collection: Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, P.L. 105-246, HAZNERS, VILIS Vol. 1_0004, Document No.: 519b7f96993294098d512d3c. The US Army began distinguishing Latvians and Estonians ‘inducted’ into Legions from other SS men later, in August 1946, and subsequently moved its Latvian POWs into DP camps in the US Zone of Germany. See: Lumans, Latvia in World War II, 389. 9 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 10 Arunas Bubnys, Matthew Kott & Ulle Kraft, “The Baltic States” in Jochen Bohler & Robert Gerwarth, eds., The Waffen-SS: A European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 124; 162. 11 Latvijas Valsts arhīvs (Latvian State Archive, hereafter LVA): Fond 1986, Criminal cases of persons accused of particularly dangerous anti-state crimes by the Committee for State Security (KGB) of the Latvian SSR, Series 1, Latvian Register of Politically Repressed Persons, Item 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court of Latvian SSR. My thanks to Edward Cohn and Sheila Fitzpatrick for realising the significance of this file to my work and providing me with a copy of its contents. 107

volunteered for German service. Juris doesn’t appear to have fit either of these categories, but the

Nazi occupation looked potentially permanent and to some it seemed expedient to get ahead of any summons and volunteer.12 Further, he was young and a farmhand of peasant stock; perhaps it was an opportunity for escape, and adventure.

Pintans managed to secure a position in an ammunition factory in Riga, rather than being sent to the front or to the Reich. His employment there lasted only three months, however, cut short by an incident which was to become the cornerstone of his personal narrative. Juris stole some quantity of goods from the factory. What he took changed each time he told the story, or perhaps with each interviewer’s translation of his words into English: ‘military things,’ ‘weapons,’ but most often ‘guns.’13 He fled immediately, straight back to Rudzāti and the farm, but it took only a few days for the SD (German Security Service) to catch up with him. The first few times

Juris recounted this to the IRO he made no mention of why he stole from the factory, seeming to emphasise the episode simply for its drama – a deliberate choice amid the proscriptions of German occupation. Later, however, his light-fingeredness became an act of resistance, the work of a partisan. In his final statutory declaration to the IRO, his motivation had become the reason d’etre of the story: ‘Because I am a freedom-loving person by nature.’14

Juris spent the next year within the walls of Riga Central Prison while his case was investigated, until the Red Army bore down on the city and the prisoners were evacuated. Juris was transferred to Danzig-Matzkau concentration camp, a penal camp for Waffen SS and Polizei.15

He spent only two months there, however, and was released when all the evidence against him was apparently ‘burnt by a comrade.’16 One IRO official described Juris’ whole story as ‘somewhat confused,’ but here it became particularly so.17 In some interviews, he asserted that he had been

12 Nasaw, The Last Million, 30. 13 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 14 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 15 Geoffrey Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 1442. 16 NAA:A12055, 820-824. This phrase is used by two different IRO interviewers in their notes but does not appear in Juris’ later statutory declaration. 17 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 108

forced to join the Wehrmacht, was enlisted into a Bau (construction) battalion and had dug trenches in Eastern Germany, taking great pains to describe how he had never had a weapon.18 In others, he claimed that he had simply happened upon the Latvian Legion while fleeing the Red

Army, and was then captured with the Legionnaires when the British arrived. His testimony to the

Soviets many years later indicated that he had been in some kind of armed Latvian unit but he evidently knew better than to say so to the IRO.19 The idea of fleeing (and fearing) the Soviets had also begun to appear in his story, which would become increasingly important as he sought resettlement.

Settling into life at Hallendorf DP Camp, Pintans encountered a 25-year-old German woman named Martha. She lived independently in a private house not far from the camp with her three-year-old daughter. Martha’s life a small town in Silesia had also been uprooted by war. She worked as a cook and moved around; in 1941, at nineteen years old, she went to Berlin with

‘marriage intentions’ and worked as a housekeeper.20 She was evacuated in 1944, having never married and now heavily pregnant. After meeting Juris in the British Zone three years later, she accepted his offer of marriage. It may have been for love, or perhaps convenience, but it was certainly not for a visa: Martha did not want to return to Silesia but nor did she want to go overseas, preferring to remain in Hallendorf.

In June 1948, Juris was sent to France to work in the mines. He had adopted Monika,

Martha’s daughter, and Martha was by then very pregnant with their first child together, a son. The young family would have joined Juris in France eventually, had all gone to plan, but he lasted only three days at the mine before quitting because the work was too difficult. He looked for other

18 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 19 LVA: f.1986-s.1-44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court of Latvian SSR. Juris’ movements between leaving Danzig-Matzkau and entering the Zedelgem POW camp indicate that he was likely with the 15th Latvian SS Volunteer Division, which formed the bulk of the Legion and included both combat units and construction battalions. The 15th Division was severely depleted upon arriving in Danzig and was replenished with whatever Latvians the Germans could find, including deserters and previous KZ inmates. See: Lumans, Latvia in World War II, 350. 20 NAA:A12055, 820-824. We don’t know who she intended to marry – or whether she even had anyone specific in mind – but this was the reason she gave to the IRO when explaining her wartime movements. 109

work in France but was told that ‘if he could not stand, he could go back to where he came from.’21

He was not the only one: this first attempt at mass resettlement was hardly a roaring success, and many DPs, despite initial enthusiasm, returned to the camps dissatisfied with conditions in the mines.22 Juris returned to Germany, where he was begrudgingly readmitted to the Hallendorf Camp as a ‘hardship case.’

There was controversy about what to do with these mine scheme returnees, who had already had one chance at resettlement.23 One IRO selection officer commented that Juris presented as ‘very healthy and strongly built, and it appears to me that he did not make very much effort.’24 Another oft-mentioned factor was his marriage to Martha, particularly because Juris was still registered as living in the camp, though she had private accommodation.25 The family’s eligibility was initially downgraded to legal and political protection only, not resettlement, due to

Pintans’ refusal of what the IRO deemed a ‘reasonable offer.’ Simultaneously, the IRO appear to have begun scrutinising Juris’ Latvian Legion story more thoroughly, wanting to see proof that he had been a labourer and not a soldier, as he claimed.26 Officials suspected that Juris had chosen to sign up for the Legion so he could stay in Riga, rather than being sent to a labour camp in the

Reich, and had thus ‘assisted the enemy forces in their action against the U.N.’27

It was only then that Juris’ more pronounced political statements about repatriation began to appear. Pintans never referenced the 1940-1 Soviet occupation of Latvia in his interviews (which many Latvian DPs did) but he began to state that his home country was ‘no longer free,’ he ‘feared political persecution,’ and was ‘sure he would lose his liberty there.’28 He would later tell the Soviets that he sought resettlement overseas because he had heard rumours that anyone ‘who, with

21 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 22 Wyman, DPs, 294. 23 Wyman, DPs, 296. 24 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 25 NAA:A12055, 820-824. Many (perhaps in the range of 20-40%) of registered DPs lived independently, periodically visiting the camp with which they were registered to collect the higher rations this afforded. See: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “‘Determined to get on’: Some Displaced Persons on the Way to a Future,” History Australia 12, 2 (2015): 111. 26 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 27 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 28 NAA:A12055, 820-824. 110

weapons in hand, had fought against the Russians would be hanged.’29 He couldn’t now admit to the IRO that he had held a weapon, but like most DPs, he evidently heard enough around the camp to know what to say and how to craft an acceptable narrative.30 While in Europe, Pintans does not appear to have been particularly loyal to either the pro- or anti-Soviet camps. It seems that he, and his family, were just getting by, trying to establish a life for themselves after an early adulthood dominated by war and disruption.

By 1950, the family appear to have been living in Hannover, and Martha was pregnant with another child. She still did not, however, want to emigrate and there is no indication that Juris did manage to produce exonerating evidence for the IRO. Ultimately, it seems that broader circumstances intervened: the mine returnees were being made eligible, deemed not ‘truly resettled’ in Belgium and France, and resettling Baltic DPs who had fought against the Soviets was increasingly seen as a Cold War expedience.31 Despite the IRO’s initial reticence to resettle the family and Martha’s apparent reluctance to emigrate at all, Juris and Martha were onboard the S.S.

Skaubryn as it departed Bremerhaven on 10th October 1951, along with their three small children.32

The Pintans family docked in Melbourne a month later and were sent to Bonegilla

Reception and Training Centre, near Albury-Wodonga.33 It appears they spent some time there – perhaps two years – while Juris was employed in farm work.34 But rather than moving to a city or town after their two years was up, the Pintans family stayed within the camp system. Martha and the children were moved to Greta Migrant Camp, near Newcastle, and Juris joined them after a

29 LVA: f.1986-s.1-44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 30 Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 42. 31 Juliette Denis, “Hitler’s Accomplices or Stalin’s Victims? Displaced Baltic People in Germany from the End of the War to the Cold War,” Le Mouvement Social 244, 3 (2013): 30; 23; Wyman, DPs, 296. 32 NAA: C1492, SKAUBRYN 12/11/1951, ‘Skaubryn Arrived Melbourne on 12 November 1951.’ 33 NAA:SP1121/1, PINTANS, JURIS, ‘Juris Pintans [Arrived Melbourne per M/S Skaubryn, 13 November 1951][Box 238]’; NAA:SP1121/1, PINTANS, MARTHA, ‘Martha Pintans [Arrived Sydney per M/S Skaubryn, 13 November 1951][Box 328]’; NAA: C1492, SKAUBRYN 12/11/1951, ‘Skaubryn Arrived Melbourne.’ Their paperwork listed them all as Latvians (Martha’s Germanness was gone, at least on the official record). Oddly, they all left Europe listed as Roman Catholics but arrived Protestants, according to the ship’s nominal roll. 34 NAA:A6119, 7049: [Redacted] to B2, Repatriation of Soviet and Satellite Nationals from Australia, Juris Pintans (Latvian National), 15 October 1957. 111

short stint as a railway porter in Sydney. The camp director at Greta noted that though they were

‘very clean living,’ the ‘family keeps very much to themselves.’35 There was at least one other

Latvian in the camp with whom Juris associated, but things were perhaps more difficult for Martha, who was not Latvian.36 Indeed, she may have experienced animosity from some other DPs regarding her nationality, though she was certainly not the only German DP-wife in the camp.37

Juris’ developing politics were also a source of isolation for the family.38

During their first few years at Greta, Juris was consistently employed. He moved into industrial work, at the BHP steelworks in Newcastle, and would have taken the train from Greta to Newcastle each day with the other DPs and locals who worked there. It was probably at the steelworks that Pintans first encountered the industrial trade union movement, his previous resume consisting primarily of farm work and forced labour. He likely interacted with the

Federated Ironworkers Association (FIA), which was dominant at the steelworks, and later the

Australian Railways Union (ARU) while working on the NSW railways. It’s conceivable that he even interacted with Jerzy Bielski in his capacity as AWU organiser, though I’ve not found records which explicitly document this.

The ARU was fairly moderate and while the FIA had previously been communist- dominated, by the time Juris was there the union had moved closer to the ALP and ousted most of it communists.39 As discussed in Chapter Three, the communist vs. Grouper conflict in the unions saw anti-communist activists and Santamaria’s Movement court the support of DPs and recruit a few migrant organisers, some of whom worked in the FIA and ARU. Juris was Catholic and occasionally attended mass in Australia, so might have connected with the Movement on this front but seems not to have been enticed by their virulent anti-communism.40 The FIA had a large

35 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 36 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 2 March 1959. 37 German wives in other camps certainly experienced this, such as Wacol in Queensland, see: Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017), 155. 38 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 39 Robert Murray, The Ironworkers: a history of the Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1982), 166; 222. 40 LVA: f.1986-s.1-44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 112

migrant membership and was the only union to commission a study of migrant workers to inform their policies.41 The ‘New Australian’ section in the FIA’s newspaper, which published articles in

German, Polish, and Italian, ran from only 1952-54, but the union did appoint Lou Censky, a

Czech DP, as a migrant organiser in 1955.42 Quite possibly, Pintans interacted with the newspaper, reading the articles in German, or spoke with Censky, or other migrant organisers. He appears to have become a union member and was generally impressed with Australian trade unionism and its role in supporting workers’ rights.43 Like most DPs entering industrial workplaces, he also likely encountered communist activists and left-wing radicals. Indeed, Douglas Jordan has noted that working under harsh conditions, especially during the two-year contract, some DPs became

‘receptive to the appeal of militant unionism.’44 For Juris, who had previously struggled with conditions in the French mines and had little recourse for support, one can imagine that robust unionism seemed like a fine idea.

In any case, once he began working at the Greta Camp itself, in 1956, his politics were more defined. His employment there lasted only two months, after the incident with his colleagues who boycotted him.45 It seems unlikely that there was any organised left-wing activity at Greta – none survives in its records – and indeed, being outspoken and left-wing looks to have been rather isolating. Politics, real or imagined, were often a source of conflict at Greta, with ‘fights when someone was suspected of being a Nazi or a Communist.’46 Juris left little to the imagination at the camp when it came to his politics. He appears to have been receiving communist literature by mail as early as 1953 and later reported reading Pravda and Izvestiia in Australia.47 When he began

41 Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947-1977 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1978), 189. 42 Murray, The Ironworkers, 224; 260; Persian, Beautiful Balts, 172. 43 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Report on the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1979), 118. 44 Douglas Jordan, “Conflict in the Unions: The Communist Party of Australia, Politics and the Trade Union Movement, 1945-1960,” (PhD Diss., Victoria University, 2011), 190; 230; 242. 45 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 46 Christopher Keating, Greta: A History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, New South Wales, 1939-1960 (Sydney: Uri Windt, 1997), 71. 47 NAA:A6119, 7049: File Note, Mr Pintans, Q. NSW 247/460 on 12/67/9; LVA: f.1986-s.1-44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 113

corresponding with the ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee in late 1956, though, his interest in such literature became somewhat evangelical.

The Soviet-backed ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee (known as Komitet za vozvrashcheniu na Rodinu in Russian, or as Juris wrote to it in German, Sowjetische Komitee “Feuer

Rükkehr in die Heimat”) was run out of East Berlin and staffed by Red Army officers.48 The

Committee produced magazines and radio broadcasts aimed at encouraging repatriation to the

Soviet Union, with programming not only in Russian, but many of the Soviet minority languages.

Articles emphasised the full amnesty provided to all repatriates and the general corruption of the

West and its exile organisations.49 They published and broadcast the testimonies of returnees, letters from family members in the Soviet Union pleading for their loved ones’ return, and socialist propaganda about jobs, free education, and social security.50 To Pintans, who was then unemployed, in debt to the migrant camp, and ostracised by other migrants and their exile organisations, these materials understandably struck a chord. He and Martha had both been writing letters to the camp director complaining about the food, and noisy dogs and neighbours which interfered with the children’s sleep.51 They wanted out of the camp and, in the absence of affordable housing, were considering returning to Europe. Juris wrote to the Committee in East

Berlin, requesting assistance in completing the repatriation forms and some periodicals in Latvian and German, so that Martha could ‘get an idea of life in the USSR.’52

There was no movement on the family’s repatriation during 1957, perhaps because Juris secured some work on the railways, but by 1958 he was corresponding with the Committee more frequently. Indeed, he was now requesting reading materials not just for himself, but for others at

48 Simo Mikkonen, “Mass Communications as a Vehicle to Lure Russian Émigrés Homeward,” Journal of International and Global Studies 2, 2 (2011): 47. 49 Jean Martin, Community and Identity: Refugee Groups in Adelaide (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 16. 50 Mikkonen, “Mass Communications,” 49-51. 51 NAA:A6119, 7049: SFO to RD NSW, Juris and Martha Pintans, 11 July 1958. 52 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 12 January 1957. The repatriation forms had to go to the Soviet Embassy in New Zealand because the Canberra Embassy had been closed when diplomatic relations ceased over the Petrov Affair. Pintans told the Committee that he couldn’t write Russian or English sufficiently well to complete the forms, so needed their assistance. 114

the camp. He was sharing the magazines with his family after he had read them himself, and was particularly interested in educating his wife and eldest daughter, Monika, about ‘the literature of the “Holy Land” of the Soviets and the development of Communism.’53 Then, he would pass the publications on to a Latvian friend in the Greta camp, who would read them and distribute them further. Many of the camp’s residents would have rejected such blatantly pro-Soviet materials outright, but Juris sought to convert them. Throughout 1958 and 1959, he contacted the

Committee requesting that they send materials to no less than forty different individual migrants

(not just Latvians, but several Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, an Estonian, and a Byelorussian) living at the Greta Camp and elsewhere, helpfully providing their names and addresses.54 He told the Committee that these émigrés were affected by the West’s anti-Soviet propaganda and had become involved in spreading it, a ‘flagrant baiting of Russia,’ which he felt it was ‘his sacred duty to combat.’55 Perhaps this was a cynical ploy and Pintans hoped to get other migrants in trouble with the authorities, but I rather think it might have been genuine. His letters often appear earnest; he expressed hope that these depictions of Soviet life would change minds, and dismay at compatriots who still held ‘themselves aloof from the newspapers.’56

ASIO were not quite sure what to make of the whole affair. At first, they struggled to discern if Pintans was trying to correct other migrants’ views, or supply resources to others who wished to do so.57 Eventually, they assessed that he was an ‘active Iron Curtain Repatriation worker’ and though they had not yet seen him engage in intelligence activities, he quite possibly

53 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 2 March 1959. 54 NAA:A6119, 7049: Letters from J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, on dates: 30 January 1958; 2 February 1958; 7 February 1958; 15 February 1958; 11 April 1958; 10 May 1958; 4 June 1958; 26 June 1958; 15 July 1958; 25 July 1958; 21 August 1958; 9 September 1958; 21 September 1958; 20 October 1958; 25 March 1959; DG to RD NSW, Juris and Martha Pintans - Repatriation, 8 April 1958; DG to RD NSW, Mr J Pintans, 17 September 1958. 55 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 17 January 1958; J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 10 March 1958; J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 10 May 1958. 56 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 10 May 1958; J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 4 August 1958. 57 NAA:A6119, 7049: DG to RD NSW, Juris and Martha Pintans – Repatriation, 23 April 1958. 115

would.58 They do not appear to have noted that Juris was having little success in encouraging repatriation, but did become increasingly concerned by the information he was conveying to the

Committee about the migrant camps and life in Australia. He wrote about the other migrants at the Greta Camp, providing details of émigré publications and various anti-communist activities which ‘not only hurt other refugees, but harm the Australian Communist and Labor Parties, and disturb the work of progressive trade unions.’59 Further, he described unemployment, wages, work and living conditions, and once even sent them a photo of the Greta Camp.60

Juris was clearly inspired by the ideas he encountered, but this flurry of activity in 1958 was perhaps also a way of coping with personal tragedy. The family had welcomed another child, Hilde, in 1955, but the subsequent few years were marred by hardship. There was unemployment and debt, plus the family had grown to seven with the arrival of another baby – a daughter, named

Sintra – but she was frequently ill.61 At five years old, she developed a kidney condition requiring extensive treatment at hospitals in Maitland and Newcastle, but was not able to overcome it; they painted a simple white headstone with her name, and she was interred at Greta Cemetery.62

Grieving the loss of a child, the family then had £186 in hospital and funeral expenses to pay, and were already in arears on their accommodation costs.63

The family were just making ends meet. Juris’ £14 per week allowed his family of five to

‘just exist,’ after his employer had deducted repayments toward the family’s debt.64 But he was out of work again during 1959, and the family’s debt had almost doubled by the end of the year. They were increasingly isolated, keeping to themselves even more than usual, and an informant noted

58 NAA:A6119, 7049: DG to RD NSW, J. Pintans, 3 December 1958. 59 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 29 March 1958; J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 9 September 1958. 60 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 29 March 1958. 61 See: NAA:ST1076/6, PINTANS, DZINTRA, Greta Reception Camp Immigration Medical Service File Cards for Dzintra Pintans, Serial Numbers 616, 1032, 470, 86. 62 NAA:A6119, 7049: [Redacted] to B2, Repatriation of Soviet and Satellite Nationals from Australia, Juris Pintans (Latvian National), 15 October 1957. 63 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 64 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 116

that ‘the general opinion in the camp is that Pintans is definitely “queer”.’65 Rumours were swirling within the camp that Juris wanted to leave for Europe.66 He petitioned for additional time in the camp, but as pressure to close it mounted and their debt grew, the prospect of securing any other housing in Australia must have seemed remote. For her part, Martha apparently ‘had no sensible proposition to offer’ regarding the family’s circumstances, and ‘seem[ed] content to drift along.’67

Tensions were high: there was a domestic dispute at the Pintans’ hut which saw the police contacted and Martha briefly left Juris, but returned.68

The Pintans had called Greta Camp home for almost eight years. Monika was now almost sixteen, Janis and Ligonis nearly teenagers, and the youngest two children (there was another baby born in 1959) knew no other life than the migrant camp. Initially they had discussed returning to

Germany, but Juris apparently won Martha over (or wore her down) and they began applying to leave for the Soviet Union.69 A dissident activist later asserted that Juris returned ‘as the result of persuasion by Soviet officials in Australia,’ but it appears that, with a nudge from the ‘Return to the Homeland’ publications, he had decided on it himself.70 In any case, between 1954 and 1959, when most of Pintans’ political activity had occurred, there were no Soviet officials in Australia, as the Embassy had closed down in the wake of the Petrov Affair. Juris’ politics, as they developed in Australia, appear to have been a product of his conditions – the family’s struggle to get ahead financially, their medical and accommodation bills, and his unemployment. But unlike in the DP camps of Europe, Juris now had principles which explained the exigencies of his life. It was his encounters with industrial trade unions and the materials provided by the ‘Return to the

65 NAA:A6119, 7049: SFO to RD NSW, Juris Pintans, 29 June 1959. 66 Keating, Greta, 71; NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 67 NAA:C3939, N1958/75105 PART 1. 68 NAA:A6119, 7049: SFO to RD NSW, Juris Pintans, 29 June 1959; Preliminary Assessment for Director General, 25 January 1962. 69 NAA:A6119, 7049: J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 30 January 1958; J. Pintans to ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee, East Berlin, 15 February 1958; RD ACT to ASIO HQ, Repatriation of Soviet & Satellite Nationals from Australia, Juris Peteris Pintans, Martha Albertovna Pintans, 24 February 1960. 70 “Australian detained in Soviet prison: dissident,” The Canberra Times, 29 September 1978, 1. 117

Homeland’ Committee which gave him a frame of reference to interpret his struggles, and a little hope, in looking toward a socialist utopia back in the Soviet Union.

In March 1960, Juris, Martha, and their five children boarded a ship bound for London, then a flight bound for Prague, and eventually arrived in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.71

Juris had expressed a desire to return to agriculture, so Soviet Repatriation authorities initially placed the family in a Latvian kolkhoz, a collective farm.72 It didn’t take long for cracks to appear in Juris’ Soviet socialist utopia. The regiments and communal living of the kolkhoz didn’t suit him.

While working on the crop brigade, he didn’t follow instructions, and further, took a ‘second breakfast’ with his daughter each day which disrupted the brigade’s work.73 He couldn’t abide the messiness of the other kolkhozniki, either, which spilt into open conflict when he told them that they ‘lived like pigs.’74 Over time, he stopped going to work and complained about the kolkhoz system in letters and increasingly heated verbal exchanges – he told the secretary of the District

Party Committee ‘I will not build Communism for you!’75 Worse still, he lauded agricultural practices in Australia and said the Soviet methods were ‘incorrect.’76

This was not a good start. The KGB summoned him for a talk due to his anti-Soviet statements, but Pintans refused ‘to recognise the fallacy of his views’ and ‘attempted to prove the

“advantage” of the capitalist system over socialism.’77 He eventually promised to improve his behaviour, but not before telling the men that he knew that they just wanted him ‘to close his mouth.’78 Initially he managed this, but Juris was rarely capable of remaining quiet for long in the face of injustice. He got a new job as a carpenter at the Riga Zoo and kept his head down for a

71 NAA:A6119, 7049: RD ACT to ASIO HQ, Repatriation of Soviet & Satellite Nationals from Australia, Juris Peteris Pintans, Martha Albertovna Pintans, 24 February 1960. 72 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, I. Ozolin’ (Office of Resettlement and Organised Recruitment) & I. Tomashko, (Commission for Repatriation), Report to Committee for State Security, 8 September 1960. 73 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 74 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 75 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, I. Ozolin’ (Office of Resettlement and Organised Recruitment) & I. Tomashko, (Commission for Repatriation), Report to KGB, 8 September 1960. 76 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 77 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, KGB LSSR Spravka, 29 September 1960; LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 78 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, KGB LSSR Spravka, 29 September 1960. 118

little while.79 But as he got to know his colleagues, he also began to tell them about the better working conditions he had in Australia – or conducted ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ as the Soviet authorities saw it.80 The other zoo workers thought he was odd; Pintans wore gloves at work, washed his hands in warm water, and ate bread with margarine.81 They tried, nonetheless, to explain to this foreigner how Soviet trade unions worked but seemed to get nowhere.

Juris’ dissent covered several issues. He addressed a union meeting at the Zoo, ‘demanding the exclusion of Communists from the trade unions,’ and (in the KGB’s parlance) ‘libellously slandered that the communists only protect the interests of "dictatorial authority" and not the interests of workers.’82 He was known to tell other Soviet citizens that the role of trade unions there ‘was merely to make the worker work harder instead of trying to improve working conditions.’83 He refused to participate in local elections, claiming that they were organised improperly.84 He ‘categorically forbid’ his two boys – Janis and Ligonis – from joining the Pioneers or completing any extra-curricular activity.85 He also ignored a summons to register at the military enlistment office, telling them that he didn’t recognise military organisations because he had no intention of fighting.86 And his letter writing reached a feverish pitch. He wrote to the local Party

Committee about the kolkhoz, then his issues with the trade union system, and when this bore no

79 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, E. Bobrov, Director Riga Zoogarden to KGB, 22 December 1961. 80 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 81 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 82 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report of Colonel Vasil'ev, Deputy Chief of KGB 2nd Department LSSR, 6 December 1961. 83 Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, “Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 118. 84 Vladimir A. Kozlov, Sheila Fitzpatrick & Sergei V. Mironenko, eds., Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 171. 85 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report of Colonel Vasil'ev, Deputy Chief of KGB 2nd Department LSSR, 6 December 1961. Though, he also forbade his children from attending religious education when they went to school in Greta, saying ‘I think that children up to 18 years of age do not understand religion, and this can be used for political purposes.’ So, perhaps this was a broader feeling about his children’s development and education. LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 86 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report of Colonel Vasil'ev, Deputy Chief of KGB 2nd Department LSSR, 6 December 1961. 119

fruit, to the 22nd Soviet Congress in Moscow, the United Nations, and apparently, even John F.

Kennedy, the newly elected US President.87

The KGB visited him at his home this time, but Juris still refused to back down. He demanded that the family be released into the ‘free world’ as he was a Latvian citizen and didn’t accept Soviet authority.88 The family had recently begun attempting to leave the Soviet Union.

They applied for visas to leave for West Germany, likely hoping that Martha’s German-born status would assist them.89 After the KGB visit, Juris even travelled to Moscow with Monika, where they attempted to visit the US Embassy but ‘militia-men’ prevented them from entering.90 They also tried the Australian Embassy, producing the Australian birth certificates of his two youngest children, claiming the family were starving and demanding first that the ‘Australian’ children be repatriated, and then, that the family be given political asylum.91 The Australian officials were unsympathetic and gave Juris the option of leaving of his own volition or being physically removed.

He eventually departed, after extracting a promise that the Australian government would be informed about his children.

The Embassy Secretary wrote to Canberra rather sceptically; he thought that Juris’ ‘story did not hang together. He and his daughter were reasonably dressed and looked far from the verge of starvation.’92 The Attorney-General’s Department decided asylum was ‘out of the question’ and instead treated Juris’ claims as a request for re-entry, so referred the matter to ASIO.93 The government were in something of a bind: the two youngest children perhaps had some right of

87 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report of Colonel Vasil'ev, Deputy Chief of KGB 2nd Department LSSR, 6 December 1961; LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR; Robert Hornsby, Protest, Reform and Repression in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 244. 88 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report of Colonel Vasil'ev, Deputy Chief of KGB 2nd Department LSSR, 6 December 1961. 89 NAA:A6119, 7049: To RR Canberra/8122 from Moscow/File 68.1.104, Peter Pintans: whereabouts inquiry, 10 October 1978. 90 NAA:A6119, 7049: H. S. North, Second Secretary, to Secretary of Department of External Affairs, Pintans Family, 8 December 1961. Pintans did not specify whose ‘militia-men,’ but it seems he was perhaps talking about US Embassy security. 91 NAA:A6119, 7049: H. S. North to Secretary, 8 December 1961. 92 NAA:A6119, 7049: H. S. North to Secretary, 8 December 1961. 93 NAA:A6119, 7049: R.B. Hodgson to Secretary, Department of Immigration, Pintans Family, 10 January 1962. 120

return, having been born in Australia, and ASIO determined that though they could not approve of Juris’ return, it would be better to have the children back sooner rather than later.94 Their recommendation to the Department of Immigration was that the children, accompanied by their mother and older siblings, would be acceptable as: ‘there is grave risk that the two Australian born children would be brought up in Russia as communists and might easily be returned by the Soviet

Union to Australia as espionage agents when they reach maturity.’95 In Spry’s logic, better that the children return immediately and grow up as Australians than return later as communist spies. But the Department disagreed and chose to reject the whole family outright.96

This decision was immaterial to Juris, however. While the government discussed the family’s case, he had been arrested and was to face court on charges of anti-Soviet activity.97

Throughout the trial, he maintained that he was not guilty. The court heard testimony from his fellow kolkhozniki, colleagues from the zoo, and repatriation officials who described Pintans’ various non-conformist statements and criticisms of the Soviet system.98 Juris repeatedly explained that though his own opinions may have been anti-Soviet, he wasn’t trying to agitate anyone else.

He said that living in Australia, he had not realised that Latvia had become the ‘victim of imperialism,’ and that the nation was an ‘unlawful colony’ of the Soviet Union.99 Juris had assimilated a little Latvian nationalism and frequently asserted the country’s right to independence.

He was not necessarily anti-communist, however. He still believed in trade unions, when operated correctly, telling the court:

Trade unions are intended for the interests of workers, and not employers. We, workers, demand

wages are increased, that appropriate working conditions be established, however, employers do

not protect the workers’ interest. [Soviet] unions must listen to the interests of the state.100

94 NAA:A6119, 7049: Preliminary Assessment for Director General, 25 January 1962. 95 NAA:A6119, 7049: C.C.F. Spry to Secretary Department of Immigration, Pintans Family, January 1962; Note for File, Juris Pintans, 9 February 1962. 96 NAA:A6119, 7049: P. R. Heydon to DG ASIO, Juris Pintans and his family, 30 April 1962. 97 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Arrest Questionnaire, 8 December 1961. 98 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 99 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 100 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 121

Figure 4.2: Juris Pintans, Mug Shot, 1961 Source: LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701

He wanted some private property, too: people should be able to have personal farms. But the kolkhoz was alright, so long as the kolkhozniki were able to go to work on time and return home on time. He told the judge that he was against the deportations of Latvians to Siberia, but didn’t think communists were inherently bad and wanted to raise his children ‘in the spirit of communism.’101 The idea of freedom was key to Juris’ thinking: with free elections, and imperialism and slavery vanquished, the era of socialism might dawn. And perhaps unsurprisingly, he continued to assert his ‘right to report mess and disorder I have seen via pen and paper.’

After setting out his political manifesto, however, the court directed that Juris be assessed for psychiatric disturbance. He spent a month at the Serbsky Institute, where he was diagnosed with a paranoid personality disorder, as he exhibited signs of being ‘persistent, not amenable to

101 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 122

direction, and [having] morbid ideas of societal restructuring.’102 Pintans was committed for compulsory treatment at the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital (SPH). Here, Juris’ trail almost ran cold. Indeed, historian Robert Hornsby lists Juris as one of at least four identified cases who were not included on ‘any of the five major registers of hospitalised dissenters.’103 He might have slipped from the historical record, had he not shared a ward and a friendship with the subsequently renowned dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky.

Bukovsky described the Leningrad SPH as ‘an ordinary prison with detention cells, bars on the windows, barbed wire, a high wall, armed guards, and where the “patients” had restricted right to correspondence and food parcels.’104 Soviet SPHs incarcerated both those legitimately convicted of psychiatric criminality – Bukovsky’s first ward-mate had murdered his own children and then cut off his ears – and dissidents without psychiatric ailment. As Bukovsky put it: ‘The sick raved, and the healthy suffered’ (though, no doubt the sick suffered, too).105 These psychologically ‘healthy’ inmates tended to congregate in ‘clubs,’ reaffirming their own collective sanity.106

It was in one such enclave that Pintans met Bukovsky, when both were prisoners of

Section 10. This section had marginally better conditions than the others, as the cell doors were usually unlocked during the day, allowing prisoners some mobility within the locked ward.107 They were mostly dissidents – about 35 or 40 out of the total 55 – and many had, like Juris, been convicted after attempting to leave the Soviet Union.108 Section 10 still used medical punishment, however, and Juris’ ‘delusions’ of union corruption and better working conditions in Australia

102 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Report No. 43, Forensic Psychiatric Examination, test subject: Pintan Iuris Petrovich, 7 June 1962. 103 Hornsby, Protest, Reform and Repression, 244. 104 Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle: my life as a dissenter (London: Deutsch, 1978), 163. 105 Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, “Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Repression in the Soviet Union,” United States Senate, 92nd Congress, Second Session, 26 September 1972, 33. 106 Bukovsky, To Build a Castle, 165. 107 Bukovsky, To Build a Castle, 169. 108 Bukovsky, To Build a Castle, 171. 123

were treated with daily doses of aminazine, an anti-psychotic drug.109 This would have had sedative effects at least some of the time, but apparently not all: Bukovsky recalled that Pintans remained defiant, spending ‘his days shouting “Bloody dogs!” at the guards.’110

To the dissidents who knew him, or knew of him, Juris was a ‘foreign communist’ and a

Latvian-Australian.111 The family had not actually become naturalised while living at Greta, though, choosing to keep their options open, in case they wanted to return to Europe. The Australian government had sought Juris’ assimilation if he contributed to its labour force but once in debt, unemployed, and with a reputation as a political radical, he was on his own. And though two of his children were born in Australia, the government had chosen not to assist Juris when he came to the Embassy: as a repatriate and a former ‘security risk,’ he would not be accepted back. Viktors

Kalnins, a Latvian dissident poet brought to Australia in 1978 to assist with a Senate hearing on

Human Rights in the Soviet Union mentioned Juris when interviewed by The Canberra Times. He insisted that the Australian trade union movement should have been agitating on behalf of the

‘Australian Latvian’ as he was ‘one of its former members.’112 The paper ran with this, titling their article ‘Australian detained in Soviet prison’ but neither the media nor the unions took up the call.

The Australian government didn’t make any move to advocate for Juris’ release either, despite the recommendations of the Senate hearing at which Kalnins testified, which referenced Juris and suggested an increase to government advocacy regarding Soviet psychiatric abuses.113 Pintans’ transnational, working-class life faded into obscurity once again for Australians.

Well-known dissidents, Samizdat writers, and intellectuals had the connections and eventually the notoriety to secure Cold War support from the West. With his skills and credibility

109 Bukovsky, To Build a Castle, 172. 110 “Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Repression in the Soviet Union,” United States Senate, 34. 111 Holger Jensen, “Soviet dissenter speaks out: ‘No Matter What, I’m Free Inside,’ He Told Judge Sentencing Him,” The Washington Post, 17 May 1970, A1-2; Hornsby, Protest, Reform and Repression, 245. 112 “Australian detained,” The Canberra Times, 1; Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, “Human Rights in the Soviet Union,” 118. 113 The government made a few discrete inquiries with the West German Embassy after the Canberra Times article ran – this turned up little and the Pintans case does not appear to have been pursued further. NAA:A6119, 7049: To RR Canberra/8122 from Moscow/File 68.1.104, Peter Pintans: whereabouts inquiry, 10 October 1978. 124

as a writer, Bukovsky’s letters appeared in the international press, and after pressure from Western diplomats and human rights activists, he was eventually released and deported. Things were a little different for unskilled dissident trade unionists. Juris appears to have taken up union politics and left-wing ideas during his eight years in Australia, amid difficult economic conditions, unemployment, and debt. His politics were not expedient while living in Greta, indeed, they isolated him. But he persisted. With a basic education and little polemical skill, but a more varied experience of political culture than some saw in a lifetime, Juris returned to the Soviet Union committed to an unwavering set of unionist principles. Perhaps he was never going to be satisfied with his working conditions. He had begun to appear somewhat paranoid, and stated that he did develop a ‘nervous’ disposition as a result of the war.114 He was certainly unlikely to become a

Samizdat writer and he protested to little recognition or effect, and with decidedly negative consequences for his family, but took up his pen and aimed it at the State nevertheless, in defence of how he believed Soviet trade unions could and should have functioned. Though he admitted to a Soviet courtroom that he had not read books on socialism, he asserted that he had read newspapers and knew what freedom and equality looked like. A socialist society, in Juris’ mind, gave the right to free elections, good working conditions, and the ability to use pen and paper to point out any ills that remained.

114 LVA: f.1986, s.1, 44701, Minutes of Court Hearing, 16-17 March 1962, Supreme Court LSSR. 125

Chapter Five Sasha: A Friend to the Rezident

When Alexander Dukin died in 2015, Edinenie, Australia’s major Russian-language newspaper, eulogised a ‘legendary person in the Russian community of Canberra’ and the Sydney Morning Herald proffered him as ‘the image of the typical immigrant from post World War II Europe who literally helped build this country.’1 Both obituaries presented a story of daring escape from war-torn

Europe, a rapid rise in Australia’s construction industry, involvement in the Russian Orthodox church, and an unparalleled contribution to Canberra’s built and social environments that culminated in the award of an Order of Australia Medal. Alexander, known to most as Sasha, had earnt this glowing account of his life with an impressively long list of achievements. But there are other aspects of Sasha’s biography which fit less easily within this narrative of a ‘typical’ DP and stalwart supporter of Orthodoxy. Indeed, the Sasha Dukin recorded by ASIO appears, at times, to have led an altogether different life.

Dukin designed and built Canberra’s Russian Orthodox church but was also a decades- long associate of the Soviet Embassy and was often found in close proximity to intelligence officers. As a result, his relationship with the Russian community was at times uneasy. Sasha was not much interested in the mechanics of socialism and capitalism but retained a strong diasporic attachment to his Soviet homeland, even where it caused him difficulties. Dukin’s seemingly incompatible associations left both ASIO and the Russian community confused as to where his

‘true’ allegiance lay. He negotiated a political culture which functioned in binaries but maintained multiple loyalties and ambivalent politics, which frequently led to allegations of espionage.

1 Kira Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie, last modified 12 September 2015, https://www.unification.com.au/articles/2963/; Brendan Cox, “Engineer Alexander Dukin was tough as nails,” Sydney Morning Herald, last modified 19 November 2015, https://www.smh.com.au/national/engineer-alexander- dukin-was-tough-as-nails-20151119-gl39c2.html. 126

The varied narratives about his biography often began with Sasha himself. If Dukin typified any part of the DP experience, it was perhaps his propensity to lie about his background, shaping his biography to the situation at hand. He was possibly one of the many DPs who obtained new identity documents via postwar Germany’s flourishing black market. This hampered ASIO’s later efforts: between Sasha’s habit of telling different stories to different people and the possibility that ‘Dukin’ was an assumed name, they struggled to obtain any solid checks on his background.2

On the question of his birthdate and place, he variously responded with 1921 or 1925, and locations as far flung as Khutir Vilny (a rural settlement in the Luhansk region of Ukraine), the town of Kuntsevo (now a district of Moscow), the city of Moscow itself, Leningrad, or

Vladivostok.3

His story began to solidify with age, however, into a biography which Edinenie said

‘reflected all the history of Russia in the last 80 years.’4 In many ways he was a child of the

Revolution: born in its wake, he was effectively orphaned by 1929, when his father, a White Army officer, and mother fell victim to a purge. Four-year-old Dukin was sent to live with an aunt in the

Urals but ran away from this ‘difficult and hungry childhood.’5 He made a journey of around 2,000 kilometres to Stalingrad and joined the ranks of besprizorniki, homeless children who survived on

2 NAA:A6119, 7043, ‘DUKIN, Alexander Volume 1’: DG ASIO to Liaison Officer, Germany, Alexander DUKIN and wife, 8 July 1959; NAA:A6119, 7043: L.O. Germany to ASIO HQ, Alexander DUKIN and wife, 8 September 1959; NAA:A6119, 7043: DG ASIO to SLO London & LO Germany, Alexander DUKIN Formerly Alexander Paul GLUSCHENKOV, 28 November 1961; NAA:A6122, 2800, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 2’: V.M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 August 1954. 3 “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry, last modified 10 September 2015, https://www.canberranovosti.com/2015/09/10/2580; NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Matrimonial Causes Division; NRS-13495, Divorce and matrimonial cause case papers, 1873-1987. NRS-13495-21-398-255/1953, Divorce Papers Alexander Dukin – Elizabeth Edith Dukin, John Herbert Lanaghan, 1953-1955; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for PSO B2, re operation "FAIRMILE.", 19 November 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: Precis of Application for Naturalization, DUKIN Alexander, 27 April 1959; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report from Deputy DG to RD, Territory of Papua and New Guinea, Alexander (Sasha) Dukin, 25 November 1965; NAA:A6119, 7043: ASIO Inward Telex Message from Canberra to Sydney, CS0202003/CN0202007, 2 February 1959; NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov Statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 August 1954. 4 Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie. 5 “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry; Vladimir Kuz’min, “Zhizn’ na sluzhbe russkoĭ Kanberry,” Edinenie, last modified 3 August 2009, https://www.unification.com.au/articles/242/; Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie. 127

the streets, often in gangs, but eventually entered an orphanage.6 Dukin was a diligent pupil and was subsequently sent to a school for military pilots. He would come of age in the Red Army.

Graduating during the war, he was sent to the front as a fighter pilot at the age of seventeen or eighteen, where he downed no less than seven enemy aircraft (or so he claimed) before he was wounded, receiving multiple military honours.7

Dukin had the makings of a steadfast Soviet patriot. He no first-hand or familial experience of pre-revolutionary Russia, and the Soviet state had fed, housed, educated and trained him, and now honoured him as a veteran. Dukin said he was even sent to be trained as an engineer while convalescing, after which he was posted to Soviet-occupied Germany in 1948, as an officer in a tank unit.8 Things began going awry however, when Sasha was caught up in a SMERSH (the infamous ‘Death to Spies’ Soviet counter-espionage agency) investigation. It seems they suspected him of planning to desert, after his close friend was captured while making a run for the American

Zone.9 Such a black mark against one’s name could bring all manner of ills and rumours abounded that SMERSH was kidnapping Russians almost at random, so Sasha opted to commit the crime he was suspected of planning: he escaped to the British Zone, entered a DP camp in Hamburg, and adopted a new identity as a Ukrainian DP.10 His time in the camp seems to have been something of a whirlwind. He met and married his first wife, Elisabeth (a Polish-born DP who

6 On besprizorniki, see: Alan Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996). 7 In these later recounts of his life, Sasha stated that he was born in 1925, but in other records, such as his marriage certificate from postwar Germany (see NSWSA: NRS-13495, NRS-13495-21-398-255/1953), his birth year was recorded as 1921 – thus, he was possibly in his early 20s, rather than late teens, at this point. Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie; “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry. 8 Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie. He didn’t have a whole lot of time to have completed an engineering qualification, between the war and being sent to Germany. It’s certainly possible, but perhaps just as likely that he had experience as a praktik in an industrial field. 9 Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie; “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry. 10 SMERSH were indeed abducting people they considered to have committed ‘war crimes’ so these fears were not unfounded, even for someone who not actually deserted or defected yet. See: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Motherland Calls: ‘Soft’ Repatriation of Soviet Citizens from Europe, 1945-1953,” The Journal of Modern History 90, 2 (2018): 331. 128

Figure 5.1: Sasha Dukin (far right) in Germany, 1948 Source: “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry appears to have been ethnically German), worked delivering the camp’s mail, and secured resettlement all within about six months.11 Seemingly without animosity toward his Soviet homeland, he took the path which made the most sense at the time and began a new adventure – en route to Australia.

The Dukins were itinerant initially: they spent a month at Bonegilla, then moved through a few rural towns in NSW as part of their two-year labour contracts, and went to Sydney around the beginning of 1950.12 Sasha worked whatever manual jobs he could find while he learnt English, including at the Colonial Sugar Refining Company and the Naval dockyard on Cockatoo Island.13

11 NSWSA: NRS-13495, NRS-13495-21-398-255/1953; NAA:A446, 1956/33636, ‘Application for Naturalisation – LANAGHAN Elisabeth Edith born 1 January 1918’; NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 1’: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 31 July 1951; NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, Alexander DUKIN, 29 October 1965. 12 NAA:SP1122/1, N1959/11135, ‘Dukin, Alexander [NSW naturalization case file – includes incoming passenger card with photograph; box 3986].’ 13 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for PSO B2, Operation “FAIRMILE”, 19 November 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for RD NSW, Aliens Employed at Cockatoo Dockyard, Sydney, 8 August 1952; Cox, “Engineer Alexander Dukin,” Sydney Morning Herald. 129

His employment seems to have been unstable, and he feared losing his job at times.14 So, he did some odd jobs on the side. He worked at the Russian Social Club as a ‘handy-man,’ an usher for

Saturday night dances, and a film projectionist. He also ‘carried out commissions’ for the Soviet

TASS men in Sydney.15

Dukin had an aunt, Klavdia, who had arrived in Sydney in 1928 and was involved with the

Social Club, and this is likely how he got his start there.16 The Social Club was perhaps an obvious home for a young, sovietised Red Army veteran, in any case. Dukin had no strong connection to the anti-communism of the Russian House, nor its ties to Orthodoxy. As established in Chapter

One, the Social Club’s events were often populated by young DPs, and its pro-Soviet orientation would have been a good fit for the patriotism Sasha appears to have developed during the war.

With a familial connection, the introduction was likely even easier. He became a frequent fixture at the club’s Saturday night dances and film screenings.17 Whether as Klavdia’s nephew or under his own steam, he made connections which brought him close to the Russian Social Club’s inner circle – he was ‘very friendly’ with the Nosovs and then the Pakhomovs (successive TASS representatives), became a founding member of the club’s Dramatic Society, and was known as an

‘offsider’ of Razoumoff, a key member and future club president.18 Sasha also sought to assist the

1946-52 club president, Augusta Klodnitskaya; on one occasion he promised to keep a man named

14 NAA:A6119, 3635, ‘Bialoguski, Michael Volume 1 (Operation Fairmile)’: J. M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation "Fairmile.", 28 February 1952. 15 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 15 May 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, 29 August 1950; NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov Statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954. 16 His aunt, Klavdia Tondi, was married to an Estonian who was a suspected CPA member and close with Nosov, the TASS man. Her husband’s step-son, Evald Tondi, played gigs at the club and was involved with its musical scene for years. Klavdia would later cause waves after visiting the Soviet Union in 1958 and apparently ‘spreading anti-Australian and pro-Soviet propaganda amongst New Australians’ on her return. NAA:A6119, 1917, ‘TONDI Edward’: Particulars Sheet No. 923, Tondi Eduard; FO to SFO, Mrs Klavdia Tondi, 2 March 1959. 17 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 15 May 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 29 August 1950; NAA:A6119, 7043: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 22 June 1951; NAA:A6122, 2799: J Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 8 August 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: J Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 9 July 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for RD NSW, Aliens Employed at Cockatoo Dockyard, Alexander DUKIN, 12 August 1952. 18 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, 15 May 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, 29 August 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, 22 June 1951; Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955), 63. 130

Vassily under close observation, as they had reason to believe he was visiting the anti-communist

Russian Club as well as the Social Club.19 He recruited new members to the club and a phone tap recorded Klodnitskaya praising his efforts.20 The club even threw a birthday party for the young

DP in 1951, seating him and his wife at a table of honour, along with members of the committee,

Vladimir Petrov, and the Pakhomovs.21 Dr Michael Bialoguski, ASIO’s primary man in the club, noted that Sasha appeared to be ‘persona grata’ with Petrov, and the two socialised on numerous occasions.22

Dukin appears to have been very pro-Soviet, but not necessarily pro-socialist or pro- communist. He was encouraged by Betty Bloch (a long-serving committee member), to join the

Eureka Youth League, a left-wing youth organisation associated with the Communist Party of

Australia (CPA) but it’s not known if he did.23 He appears to have associated primarily with Russian pro-Soviet groups and individuals rather than the broader Left. Bialoguski was somewhat confused by Dukin, noting that he, along with Lydia Mokras, another enigmatic Russian DP, occasionally made statements ‘that would lead one to infer that they are anti-Soviet.’24 Sasha’s familiar associations with the Soviet Embassy men and their wives and close, sustained involvement with the Social Club indicate that he was not anti-Soviet, though he was perhaps able to be critical of the Soviet Union on some counts. Becoming ‘Ukrainian’ in Europe appears to have been purely instrumental and once in Australia, Sasha reverted to being a Russian. Like many at the Club, though, he saw this in Soviet terms. On one occasion, he was remorseful after insulting one of the committee’s prominent members, Tamara English. He told Mokras ‘that his actions were unforgiveable. He should not have acted as he did as it reflected on the Soviet Union. He appeared

19 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 19129, Vassily, 4 April 1951. 20 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for RD NSW, 12 August 1952. 21 NAA:A6119, 7043: Extract from Memo, Russian Social Club, 31 July 1951. 22 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club – Cultural Evening, 9 July 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 9 July 1951. 23 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for RD NSW, 12 August 1952. 24 NAA:A6122, 2799: J Baker Report, Russian Social Club – Cultural Evening, 9 July 1951. Bialoguski also mused that perhaps they made such statements to ascertain his ‘real sympathies by trapping him into making anti-Soviet statements.’ 131

to be in a very sentimental mood and was actually crying as he said to Mokras, “I speak as a Soviet man to a Soviet woman.”’25

The club’s Soviet identity was welcoming for DPs like Dukin, who had grown up as purely

Soviet Russians, but it retained some class-based divisions which were less inclusive. Many existing committee members, like the Klodnitskys, were of the intelligentsia and sought to elevate the club’s cultural and intellectual standards. Orphaned fighter pilots like Dukin, who enjoyed the revelry of the Saturday night cabaret dances, were not exactly assisting this cause. Though the club supported the idea of attracting new DP members in principle, some of the new arrivals brought along by

Dukin made the older members decidedly nervous.26 Some blamed Dukin for the incident where

Fedia, who held the wrong political views, came to the club and was rejected by the Pakhomovs

(see Chapter One). Tamara English, a prominent committee member, thought Dukin had been involved with unsavoury DPs, telling Klodnitskaya that he ‘was scared of New Australians because he had his jaw broken once and … he does not want to be knifed.’27 He was indeed involved in a brawl at the club on one occasion.28 Even Razoumoff, who seems to have otherwise taken Dukin under his wing, thought the young man could have been a threat. In 1953, he told the committee that the Club ‘should be very careful in respect to the admission of new members, as it was felt some of the New Australians may try to join the Club with a view to taking control of it.’ He cited

Sasha as an example, labelling him a ‘hooligan.’29

Dukin did try to get on the club’s committee, according to Klodnitskaya ‘in vain,’ however does not appear to have been planning to stage a coup.30 But the club’s fears about the potentially negative impacts of his attendance were not unfounded. Sasha had found a new home at the club,

25 NAA:A6122, 2799: J Baker Report, 4 July 1951. 26 NAA:A6119, 7043: J. Baker Report, Australian-Russian Society, 4 July 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: Extract Memo from N. Spry, Russian Social Club, 31 July 1951; NAA:A6119, 7043: Extract Report from RD NSW, 9 October 1951; NAA:A6122, 2800: Report No. 17924, Kalka, 21 May 1951. 27 NAA:A6119, 7043: Extract Report from RD NSW, 9 October 1951. 28 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report for RD NSW, 12 August 1952. 29 NAA:A6119, 7043: File Note, DUKIN, Sasha, 31 July 1953. 30 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile,” 29 January 1952. 132

but the same could not be said of his wife, Elisabeth. Apart from attending his birthday party in

1951, she does not appear to have accompanied Sasha there at all. 31 Their home life was less than ideal, and it appears there was infidelity on both sides. In 1952, Elisabeth began an affair with a

Detective Sergeant of the NSW Police Force, who appears to have worked for Special Branch (the intelligence section).32 Dukin and Petrov both suspected that she was giving the detective information about Dukin’s activities.33 Quite possibly she did. The Social Club was certainly investigated for potentially breaching licencing restrictions in 1952, based on a tip provided by the very same detective.34 Though the club was not closed or even fined over the incident, Dukin was

– however inadvertently – bringing them additional attention from the authorities which they could have done without.

Sasha also tended to insinuate that he was, or had been, himself involved in intelligence work, which no doubt made some at the club nervous. He was often larger-than-life when with

Mokras and Bialoguski. In this respect, Sasha and Lydia were quite the pair. Lydia was a little older than Dukin, in her early thirties, and had also arrived as a DP. She told many different stories about her supposed interactions with intelligence work but appears largely to have been a fantasist (see

Chapter Eight). Bialoguski, himself an ASIO agent and Mokras’ lover, noted that he ‘felt that she might be an agent for one side or the other, playing some kind of double game.’35 At least in this company, Sasha also had a history as an intelligence man. According to Mokras, the story he told

31 NAA:A6119, 7043: Emergency Measures – Internment of Aliens, Dukin Elizabeth, 1 May 1957. 32 NSWSA: NRS-13495, NRS-13495-21-398-255/1953; NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Matrimonial Causes Division; NRS-13495, Divorce and matrimonial cause case papers, 1873-1987. NRS-13495-21-397-233/1953, Divorce Papers Edith Victrine Tankersley Lanaghan – John Herbert Lanaghan, 1953-55. 33 NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander Dukin, 23 September 1954. 34 This Sergeant Lanaghan provided a tip that the film They Chose Peace was to be screened at the club and an admission fee charged, making this a public event which contravened the club’s Public Halls licence. "They Chose Peace" Film Prepared by the Committee of Youth Peace Carnival, 6 November 1952, NSWSA: Theatres and Public Halls Branch, NRS-15318, Files relating to licences for theatres and public halls, 1895-1992, [17/3620.1]-17/3620.1[DUP2], Russian Social Club, Sydney, 1940-1976. 35 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 64. 133

Figure 5.2: Sasha Dukin, 1948 Source: NAA:SP1122/1, N1959/11135 her included work for both the Russians and the Americans (simultaneously), spending some time in the US but returning to Germany, and then fleeing for Australia when the Soviets found him out.36 In another version he was captured by the Soviets but ‘escaped by shooting some Russians.’37

134

Neither ASIO, nor the Soviets, nor Bialoguski trusted Mokras’ accounts of such things so this was potentially a fabrication on her part. But Sasha also made similar comments in Bialoguski’s presence. He once told Mokras and Bialoguski that ‘he was a member of Soviet counter espionage at the age of 17.’38 Indeed, Bialoguski initially thought Dukin was a part of the Soviet spy ring that

Mokras had insinuated she was running in Sydney.39 On one occasion at the Social Club, Dukin

‘started a long tirade. Obviously boosted by drink, Dukin was boastfully recounting his exploits as a lieutenant in a military detachment of the N.K.V.D. Now Lydia was backing up Dukin, as if for

Petrov’s benefit, with Petrov maintaining a stony silence.’40

Perhaps, Sasha wanted to be involved with whatever intelligence activity seemed to be happening around Mokras and the Soviet officials. And, as a Red Army deserter, he may have felt the need to beef up his credentials in front of the Soviet officials. Pakhomov, the TASS man with whom Dukin often socialised, told Petrov that he considered the DP ‘a traitor because he deserted from the Soviet Army.’41 Petrov himself seemed less concerned by the desertion. He spoke to

Dukin at Augusta Klodnitskaya’s request once, after she became worried about him. The young

DP had, while intoxicated, told her ‘he would not go back to the Soviet because he would be ashamed to look in the eyes of the comrades’ and she asked Petrov to ‘try to save him.’42 Petrov tried talking to Dukin, but seemed unable to convince him that repatriation was an option.43 All

Dukin’s open talk of Soviet espionage bothered Petrov, however. The ‘stony silences’ when Lydia

36 NAA:A6119, 3635: J. M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation "Fairmile" 21 December 1951. 37 NAA:A6119, 192, 'JANOVSKI, Lidia Mokras [Lidia Mokras, nee Janovski]’: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954. In this case, Mokras told ASIO that she thought Dukin had said so ‘to allay my suspicion that he was a Communist.’ 38 NAA:A6122, 2799: J Baker Report, Russian Social Club – Cultural Evening, 9 July 1951. 39 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Observations by case officer re operation "Fairmile." 2 April 1952; J. M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Operation "Fairmile" 27 March 1952. 40 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 65. There were rumours that Dukin’s aunt, Klavdia Tondi, had a brother in Moscow who was a ‘high official of the N.K.V.D.’ – it’s difficult to know how much stock to put in such reports delivered to ASIO, but perhaps there was a familial intelligence connection. NAA:A6119, 1917: Field Officer to SFO, Mrs Kalvdia Tondi, 2 March 1959. NKVD (Narodnyĭ komissariat vnutrennikh del) conducted Soviet intelligence operations until 1946, when it was replaced by the MGB. 41 NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954. 42 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation "Fairmile," 15 April 1952. 43 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation "Fairmile," 10 April 1952. 135

and Sasha talked about the NKVD increased, and Petrov eventually tried to distance himself from them. He stopped associating with Lydia and spoke with open hostility about Dukin when

Bialoguski mentioned him.44 The doctor reported to ASIO that on one occasion he told Petrov that Dukin ‘is like a snake, you can never pin him down to anything’ and Petrov agreed wholeheartedly.45

It’s difficult to know whether Dukin’s claims about working for Soviet intelligence were imagined or perhaps aspirational, like Mokras’. In either case, such public talk of intelligence work spooked Petrov and the other officials and seems to have disrupted Dukin’s relationships with them. There were other occasions where Petrov appeared friendlier toward Dukin, but ultimately his post-defection assessment was that Sasha was ‘an unreliable type of person.’46 Petrov recorded a two-page statement regarding Dukin during his debriefing, focused predominantly on Sasha’s variable biography and salacious rumours at the Club about Dukin and his wife. He didn’t mention the claims of working for the NKVD, but professed ignorance; he had ‘no knowledge whatever of Dukin being an agent either for or against the Soviet Union.’47 Perhaps he thought these were just youthful boasts, or lacked credibility so were not worth mentioning. He did state that they had discussed repatriation and Sasha thought he might return one day, but concluded opaquely: ‘At no time did he express any hostility towards the Soviet Union, but I am not in a position to say whether he was pro or anti-Soviet.’48 It was true that Dukin’s politics were somewhat ambiguous

44 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, re operation "Fairmile," 10 April 1952. 45 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation "Fairmile," 30 January 1952. 46 NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954. 47 NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954. 48 NAA:A6122, 2800: V. M. Petrov statement regarding Alexander DUKIN, 23 September 1954. The statement also contains some odd factual inaccuracies. Petrov repeats the story about Dukin having been to the US, but says he did so between being in Germany in Australia, which does not match the IRO’s records, see: Arolson Archives: International Refugee Organisation, 3.1.3.2., Correspondence and nominal roles, done at Naples: transport by ship (SKAUGUM); transit countries and final destinations: Australia, Italy, 81763977. He also says that Dukin married a Russian widow in 1953. His divorce from Elisabeth was not finalised until 1955 (see: NSWSA: NRS-13495, NRS- 13495-21-398-255/1953), so if he did marry in 1953, it was bigamously, and he gives no account of another marriage during the 1950s. Petrov also mentions bumping into Sasha at a bar in Queanbeyan in 1953, where the latter claimed to be living at the time. This is certainly possible, but it doesn’t match his divorce and naturalisation records, which have him living at one address in Sydney until the late 1950s, see: NSWSA: NRS-13495, NRS-13495-21-398-255/1953; NAA:A6119, 7043: Precis of Application for Naturalization, DUKIN Alexander, 27 April 1959; Certificates of Naturalisation, Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 20 October 1960, Issue 70, 3600. 136

during the early 1950s, though. He did appear pro-Soviet in a patriotic kind of way, but his relationship (whether real or imagined) to intelligence confused matters – it was difficult to know where his allegiances lay, if indeed he had any.

The mid-1950s and the Petrov Affair are particularly murky parts of Dukin’s story. He barely mentioned his Sydney years at all when recounting his life and his ASIO file jumps inexplicably from April 1953 (almost precisely a year before the defection) to May 1957.49 The

1953-4 break mirrors a dearth of reporting in the Russian Social Club file: Bialoguski and Petrov were spending less time there and thus, fewer reports about the Club were made. From 1954 to

1957 however, the silence becomes odd. Perhaps, it reflects Dukin laying low during the Royal

Commission on Espionage and its aftermath. Petrov’s defection and the very public commission should have scared anyone who had spent significant time with the Embassy men, let alone bragged about having worked for the NKVD in front of them. One could also speculate, however, that Sasha was cooperating with ASIO at the time.

It was, of course, possible to be simultaneously an ASIO agent and ASIO surveillance target. In the mid-1960s, a source reported that Nikolai Oleksyn, then a Russian Social Club committee member, said Dukin had formerly worked as an Australian ‘Security Agent.’50

According to Lydia Mokras, Dukin had told her as much.51 Somewhat unkindly, however, she added that he was ‘a very bad type, of very poor education … I don’t think, however, that he would have enough brains for this type of work.’52 These are hardly unimpeachable sources, but there are some odd aspects in Dukin’s ASIO files. Many of the reports about Dukin don’t appear in his files at all: the copy of Petrov’s statement about him is in the Russian Social Club’s files, and

49 Oddly, Petrov’s statement on Dukin does not appear in his ASIO file – though it should have – but a copy remains in ASIO’s dossier on the Russian Social Club. 50 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, Alexander DUKIN, 29 October 1965; NAA:A6122, 2802, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 4’: Report No. 282/62, Russian Social Club, 11 July 1962; NAA:A6122, 2802: Report No. 51960, Russian Social Club, 19 April 1962. 51 NAA:A6119, 192: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954. 52 NAA:A6119, 192: Statement by Lidia Mokras, 10 June 1954. 137

most of the reports about him from Mokras and Bialoguski are in their respective files. Of course, when faced with the choice between an administrative error and a conspiracy, the administrative error is usually the more likely option. But one such report, where Ron Richards, ASIO’s NSW

Director, detailed subjects of interest mentioned in Bialoguski’s tell-all memoir noted that ‘the case of Dukin is well-known to the Controller, Special Services Section.’53 ASIO’s Special Services

Section was responsible for agent running. And finally, Dukin appears to have been naturalised with relatively little issue. ASIO conducted their usual security assessment, which frustratingly, is peppered with redacted lines.54 NSW Special Branch appear to have pushed ASIO for a decision, and Sasha’s naturalisation was approved.55 The whole process took just over six months which, when compared with the experience of other migrants with ‘adverse’ security records (see the case of Jacob Horowitz in Chapter Seven), is rather swift. It’s impossible to tell with any certainty whether Dukin worked for or cooperated with ASIO. But given his earlier interest in being involved with intelligence or at least projecting the image that he was, one can imagine he might have been open to an approach by ASIO. On the basis of this particularly fragmentary evidence, it’s certainly a plausible narrative for Sasha during the mid-1950s.

Whether true or not, rumours about Dukin’s supposed ASIO work appear to have changed the course of his life in Australia. He got involved with Soviet officials once again when the

Embassy returned in June 1959, becoming friendly with Ivan Skarbovenko, the Second Secretary,

53 NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY, ‘Bialoguski, Michael Dr Vol 2.’: G.R. Richards, DDG Ops to Director B2, ASIO HQ, Dr. Bialoguski's Book, 28 November 1955. Richards also referenced correspondence on the matter from 1954 (which is not in Dukin’s file) and recommended that Special Services section be contacted for further details. 54 NAA:A6119, 7043: Director B2 Assessment of Alexander Dukin, 20 November 1958; NAA:A6119, 7043: RD NSW to ASIO HQ, Alexander DUKIN, Applicant for Naturalization, 23 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 7043: Memo [Redacted], 7 December 1959. Dukin’s naturalisation file, too, has had one folio withheld entirely on the basis that it would reveal ASIO’s methods and the identity of an ASIO source, see: NAA:SP1122/1, N1959/11135. 55 NAA:A6119, 7043: Precis of Application for Naturalization, DUKIN Alexander, 27 April 1959; Alexander Dukin, Application for Naturalization, Except in List 63, 22 May 1959; RD NSW to ASIO HQ, Alexander Dukin, Application for Naturalization, 23 October 1959; Memo [Redacted], 7 December 1959; ASIO Minute Paper, 10 February 1960. Special Branch effected at least two internal ASIO memorandums requesting the application be resolved, one of which refers to Dukin in connection with ‘the case of Mrs. Klawdia Tondi’ (Dukin’s aunt, who was also involved with the Social Club and had recently returned from a trip to the Soviet Union), the other’s argument for haste is redacted. 138

and contacting Victor Khmara, the new TASS man.56 But Oleksyn, the Russian Social Club member who had heard that Dukin was an ASIO man dutifully reported this to Skarbovenko.57

The Second Secretary likely panicked – Skarbovenko had apparently even stayed at Dukin’s house one night (just like Petrov had with Bialoguski only a few years prior), and ceased his relationship with Dukin.58 Oleksyn also exposed Sasha within the Russian Social Club and the Committee quickly voted to revoke his membership and expel him, under the pretext of his ‘association with women from Brisbane who were considered to be undesirable.’59 Oleksyn’s information on Dukin was second-hand, gained from a former DP he knew, but it was clearly enough for the club’s committee.60 This was perhaps the result of heightened suspicion in the years following Petrov’s defection and the Royal Commission on Espionage. But many in the club had questioned whether

Dukin’s participation in the club was beneficial for years. He was pro-Soviet, certainly, but there were already doubts about his loyalty to the club and its members and he would not be given the opportunity to betray them.

After being chased out of Sydney, Dukin started over in Canberra. He left behind the

Russian Social Club, the Petrov Affair, his first marriage, and most of his Sydney connections. He was ready to settle down, but his life was not going to be radically different. Now in his thirties,

Dukin found work as a refrigeration mechanic and attended night school to qualify as an engineer.

He met Leonide (Lina) Cylc, a Russian-Ukrainian former DP who had survived forced labour and

Buchenwald. They married in 1966 and settled in the suburb of Ainslie with their daughter,

56 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 52226, Ivan Skarbovenko, 28 May 1962; NAA:A6119, 7043: Note to [Redacted], 30 May 1962; NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Alexander Dukin, 30 September 1965; NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, Alexander DUKIN, 29 October 1965; NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Sasha Dukin – Contact with Khmara, 3 February 1966; David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963, Volume 1 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 557; “From Russia with Indignation,” Letter to the Editor, The Canberra Times, 19 May 1965, 2. 57 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, Alexander DUKIN, 29 October 1965. ASIO thought ‘Ruban’ was probably Ivan Ruban, who repatriated to the Soviet Union in January 1961. 58 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, Alexander DUKIN, 29 October 1965. 59 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, 29 October 1965. 60 NAA:A6119, 7043: Report No. 5304/65, 29 October 1965. Oleksyn’s source was a man named ‘Ruban.’ ASIO thought this was probably one Ivan Ruban, who repatriated to the Soviet Union in January 1961. 139

Victoria.61 With his new Australian engineering qualifications in hand, Sasha began building a career which would span three decades, becoming a well-known figure in Canberra’s construction industry.62

Though otherwise a fresh start, Dukin retained his connections with the Soviet Embassy.

He remained in contact with Victor Khmara, the TASS man, and by 1967, was also in touch with two of the Commercial Attachés.63 His contact with the Embassy increased steadily, peaking from

1968-70, during Vladimir Alekseev’s posting as Third Secretary and Consul.64 ASIO determined that Alekseev was KGB – likely the rezident, or chief intelligence officer – and he became priority number one, with as comprehensive a surveillance detail as the Canberra Office could manage.65

The Dukin family was caught up in this surveillance net as Sasha’s relationship with Alekseev grew and by December 1968, their family home was itself the subject of a phone tap.66 Dukin, the hooligan DP turned successful engineer, was once again living in a world inhabited by both Soviet and Australian intelligence officers.

It is not entirely clear how Dukin and Alekseev met. The first contact between the two men recorded by ASIO was in a phone call made by Stanislaw Savva from the Soviet Consulate to the Dukins’ home.67 Savva, a Russian who migrated in 1961 and became Vice-President of the

Russian Social Club, had retained his friendship with Dukin and was staying at his house while

61 Kuz’min, “Zhizn’ na sluzhbe russkoĭ Kanberry,” Edinenie; Cox, “Engineer Alexander Dukin,” Sydney Morning Herald; Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie. Victoria, later known as Vicky, would appear to have been Lina’s child, born before she met Dukin, but he always referred to her as his daughter. 62 Savina, “Aleksandr Pavlovich Dukin,” Edinenie; “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry; Advertisement for SAAB, The Canberra Times, 14 August 1985, 3 (an advertisement for SAAB cars splashed Dukin’s moustached face across the page, labelling him a ‘Leading Canberra Contractor’). 63 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Khmara Victor Vasilievich (“Tass” Correspondent – A.C.T. File K/1/110), 14 December 1967. Dukin was not in contact with Ivan Skripov, the Embassy First Secretary declared persona non grata in 1963 for espionage, so avoided being caught up in another spy scandal. 64 John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963-1975, Volume 2 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), 204-5. 65 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 213; 218-9. 66 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept report, Alexander DUKIN, Maria Pavlovna PSALIOVA (SYDNEY)/Leonida Grigorovna DUKINA, 11 December 1968. 67 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy – Contact with Russian Social Club, 18 January 1968; NAA:A6122, 2803, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 5’: Intercept Report, Alexander Timofeevich Klements, 15 January 1965; NAA:A6122, 2807, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 7’: Intercept Report, Michael Baidin, 24 March 1966. 140

visiting Canberra. Dukin, who had not lost his enthusiasm for parties, celebrated Savva’s visit by holding a soiree that evening. When put on the phone with Alekseev, Sasha personally invited the

Consul and his wife to join them. This became an established pattern between the two men – frequent phone calls, dinners at one another’s houses with their wives, drinking at one another’s offices, fishing trips to lakes around Canberra with other Embassy men, and the occasional trip to

Sydney. During Alekseev’s three-year posting, ASIO reported on 149 telephone conversations and

53 visits between the Dukins and the Alekseevs.68 From January to November of 1970, prior to the Alekseevs’ departure in December, the Dukins and Alekseevs were in contact, on average, at least 3.5 times per week.69

The friendship solidified quickly. An intercept translator commented in April 1968 that the men appeared ‘on almost intimate terms,’ noting that Dukin knew of Alekseev’s girlfriend,

Irina, from the Moscow Circus.70 The translators also noted the casual familiarity of the Alekseevs’ and Dukins’ language: they addressed each other informally (the Russian ti rather than vi) and with diminutives (Volodya, Sasha, Natasha, and Lina).71 In bidding farewell to Lina, Alekseev on one occasion ‘blew kisses into the phone.’72 They swapped cassette tapes, books, recommendations about films and reliable tradesmen, and shared bottles of vodka.73 The Alekseevs were even invited

68 See: NAA:A6119, 7043; NAA:A6119, 7044, ‘DUKIN, Alexander Volume 2’; NAA:A6119, 7045, ‘DUKIN, Alexander Volume 3’. The telephone data is likely closer to the actual number of calls, while the data on physical meetings is more sporadic as physical surveillance of Alekseev often proved difficult (see Blaxland, The Protest Years, 204-5; 219). In any case, they would have met and spoken on more occasions than ASIO was able to record, with their limited resources. There were only two Russian translators working for ASIO in Canberra at the time, whose time was stretched so thin that they were instructed to report only on conversations of ‘operational importance.’ (See Chapter Eight for a detailed discussion of telephone interceptions, as well as Blaxland, The Protest Years, 22; 225). 69 NAA:A6119, 7044; NAA:A6119, 7045. This includes telephone intercepts and recorded meetings. 1970 was selected for analysis, as ASIO had the most consistent data collection that year – phone taps were operating on Dukin’s home, the Soviet Embassy, Consulate, and Residences. 70 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 30 April 1968. 71 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 3rd Secretary, A/1/69, 10 April 1968; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, (Consul, ACT File A/1/69), 13 May 1968; Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 27 December 1968. 72 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 13 November 1970. 73 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich Alekseev, 27 July 1968; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, ACT File A/1/69, 8 January 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 6 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, A.C.T. File A/1/69, 7 July 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 10 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, 141

to Vicky Dukin’s wedding.74 Dukin and Alekseev’s increasingly frequent nights of heavy drinking did cause a little friction for their families – Natalia Alekseeva was particularly incensed by a few of their drunken phone calls to her – but they smoothed things over and the friendship continued up to the end of the Alekseevs’ posting.75 He was a well-known figure at the Embassy; ASIO recorded his contacts with thirteen of the Embassy’s 30 personnel in 1970.76 With the distance of a few more years, being a Red Army deserter and a DP no longer tainted Sasha’s relations with the

Soviet officials. Now, he was an established Russian-Australian businessman maintaining a connection to his Soviet homeland through his friendships with Soviet citizens. Perhaps this helped him reconcile not being able to return to the Soviet Union. He later recalled that he had wanted to go, to at least visit his homeland, but was talked out of it: ‘After all I was a military man, they considered me a deserter. These were the times.’77

The Dukins also, like most émigrés, engaged with Russian cultural activity in Canberra, attending Soviet Film Festivals, the Russian Circus, and performances of Georgian dancers and

Vladimir Alexandrovich (Consul – Third Secretary – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 14 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy – Contact with Trades People, 20 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Evgeniya Glass, 29 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary ACT File (TS) A/1/69, 7 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Aleksander Dukin, 27 September 1970. 74 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Third Secretary, A.C.T. File A/1/69, 8 May 1970; Intercept Report, Visit to Georgian Dancers, 5 May 1970. 75 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 6 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, ACT File (TS) A/1/69, 17 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, A.C.T. File (TS)A/1/69, 18 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69, 25 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 4 September 1970. 76 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, ACT File A/1/69, Vladimir Vasilievich PLUSCHENKO, Counsellor, ACT File P/1/130, 2 April 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Surveillance Report, 2 April 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 5 May 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary A.C.T. File (TS) A/1/69, MISHIN, Vasili Grigorevich, Guard/handyman, A.C.T. File (TS)M/1/208, 15 July 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69, 7 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 4 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 10 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Aleksander DUKIN, 27 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Grigorievich KRAVCHENKO, Chauffeur, A.C.T. File (TS)K/1/135, 9 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy – Issue of Visas, 14 October 1970; Blaxland, The Protest Years, 213. He also remained in contact with a number of them after Alekseev left, including Vladimir Khodnev (Embassy Superintendent and KGB man), Adolph Gorev (First Secretary), Mikhail Dedyruin (Gorev’s successor) and Yuri Tumanov (Commercial Officer). 77 Kuz’min, “Zhizn’ na sluzhbe russkoĭ Kanberry,” Edinenie. 142

the Bolshoi Ballet. They regularly obtained their tickets via the Soviet Embassy, usually from

Alekseev, and often attended with the Consul and his wife.78 Indeed, their connection to the

Embassy often gave them greater access to visiting artists and performers. When a Russian ballet troupe toured in 1969, Lina prepared fifteen roast chickens and the Dukins entertained a group of thirty dancers and Embassy officials after the performance; the party did not break up until 6.30 the next morning.79 Such events had political overtones within the Russian community, however.

Oleg Kavunenko, Vice-President of the United Council of Ex-migrants from Communist

Dominated Europe, wrote a letter to the Canberra Times protesting the ballet tour being ‘sent abroad for the propaganda purposes of Russian Imperialism,’ which Dukin and Alekseev later ridiculed in conversation.80 The Dukins’ late night soiree with the ballet dancers and officials would have provoked outrage (and perhaps some jealousy) among Canberra’s Russians, too.

They were, by this point, also somewhat involved with Canberra’s Russian Orthodox community. This was new for Sasha and was likely instigated by Lina, who often chatted to

Canberra’s parish priest, Father Anthony Dudkin, and discussed church affairs with friends.81 Their association with the church gradually increased during the early 1970s, culminating in Sasha’s

78 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 27 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Soviet Film Festival, 28 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Consul – Third Secretary – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 14 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Invitations to Film Show, 27 May 1971; NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 28 March 1968; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, A.C.T. File A/1/69, 1 April 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Visit to Georgian Dancers, 5 May 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 18 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 18 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 23 & 24 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 16 July 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 20 & 21 July 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 2 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Relationship with Alexander Dukin, 7 October 1971. 79 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Evgeniya Glass, 29 April 1969. 80 “Ballet and Politics,” Letter to the Editor, The Canberra Times, 18 April 1969, 2; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 18 April 1969. 81 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander Dukin, 9 January 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 15 January 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 12 March 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Contact Between Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet Embassy, 13 April 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Wedding, 10 December 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Church Activities, 23 January 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Association with the Church, 13 May 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Associations with the Church, 4 November 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Association with the Church, 31 December 1971; Michael Protopopov, “The Russian Orthodox Presence in Australia: The History of a Church told from recently opened archives and previously unpublished sources” (PhD diss., Australian Catholic University, 2005), 378. 143

involvement with building the new church and joining its committee. When ASIO caught Dukin joking about his newfound religiosity while on the phone with a friend in Sydney, the intercept’s translator (perhaps an Orthodox church-goer themselves) provided scathing comment: ‘The above conversation reveals Dukin’s attitude toward the religion. He is no doubt a hypocrite. His efforts in Church are only a front. He makes a mockery out of the Church.’82 ASIO puzzled over Dukin’s move toward the church for some time. One case officer mused that it was perhaps related to espionage, as Sasha would ‘no doubt hear gossip which would be of interest to the R.I.S [Russian

Intelligence Services],’ but that, conversely, ‘with Dukin, self interest is paramount, and he may merely wish to make himself important in the Russian community.’83 This is perhaps too trenchant a distinction, but Sasha did indeed seem to be finding a more stable place in the community and some purpose as a Russian-Australian, compared to his Sydney days – though he wasn’t giving up those Soviet connections.

Sasha’s attachment to the Embassy officials caused some friction as the Dukins entered the church community.84 Alekseev bringing two Soviet priests who were visiting with a tourist group to the Dukins’ house for dinner was a particular setback.85 The Dukins were delighted; Lina commented to a friend that she was ‘very impressed with them,’ recounting their descriptions of packed churches and priests without political entanglements in the Soviet Union.86 But the meeting caused grave concern among some clerics. The Russian Orthodox Church in Exile which had jurisdiction in Australia’s Russian churches was, by nature, opposed to the Moscow Patriarchate from which the Soviet priests hailed – indeed, many Russians in Australia would remain suspicious

82 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Association with the Church, 30 November 1971. 83 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Association with the Church, 4 November 1971. 84 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 12 March 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Wedding, 10 December 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Special Branch Police Report, Alexander DUKIN and Bishop THEODOSY, 26 August 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Associations with the Church, 4 November 1971. 85 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 22 October 1970; Intercept Report, Soviet Tourists Visiting Australia, 22 October 1970. 86 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Association with the Church, 26 October 1970. 144

of the ‘Soviet Church’ even after 1991.87 Two of its clergymen approached ASIO for assistance in keeping Sasha ‘out of the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Canberra,’ suspecting the

Soviet priests had put him up to facilitating a Moscow Patriarchate coup in Australia. ASIO told them to handle it themselves.88 So it wasn’t just ASIO which was concerned by the dual loyalties of migrants like Dukin. To these anti-communist émigrés, Dukin’s close relationship with the

Soviet officials divided his allegiance, making him a potential agent of communism and a threat.

Lina was more concerned by the appearance of their Soviet connections than her husband.

Seeing the Alekseevs at home was one thing, but flaunting the relationship publicly was another.

While Alekseev and others would visit Sasha at work and he went to the Embassy compound regularly, Lina was concerned about being seen there.89 They argued about it once, after Natalia

Alekseeva had invited them to a film screening at the Embassy and Lina declined, making excuses.

Dukin argued that they could have entered through the back, but Lina cried ‘What’s the difference

87 The two patriarchates were so opposed that priests ordained by the Moscow Patriarchate had to publicly renounce their allegiance and undertake a period of penance if they wanted to resume ministry in Australia with the Church Abroad. And even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the establishment of Moscow Parishes in Australia was met with suspicion by Russian church-goers (see Protopopov, “The Russian Orthodox Presence,” 151; 322). It’s thus interesting that Alekseev and Dukin were trying to arrange for Fr. Anthony Dudkin, the Canberra parish priest, to meet the Soviet priests on ‘neutral ground’ at Dukin’s house. Dudkin seemed open to the idea – or at least discussed it with Alekseev – but it’s not known whether they did meet. NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 22 October 1970; Intercept Report, Soviet Tourists Visiting Australia, 22 October 1970. 88 NAA:A6119, 7045: Report by Controller B2 to Assistant Director General B2 at HQ, Russian Orthodox Church, 13 November 1970. 89 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 6 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 2 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 4 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 15 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, A.C.T. File (TS)A/1/69), 15 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 16 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, ACT File (TS)A/1/69, 10 November 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Consul - Third Secretary - A.C.T. File A/1/69), 15 November 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 11 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, ACT File (TS) A/1/69, 17 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, A.C.T. File (TS) A/1/69, 28 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 30 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Aleksander DUKIN, 27 September 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Invitations to Film Show, 27 May 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy, Relationship with Alexander DUKIN, 20 October 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy, Contact with Alexander DUKIN, 1 December 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Yuri Vasilievich TUMANOV, 23 December 1971. 145

how you get in, it is still going to be held there … Especially now, after all this!’90 It’s not clear whose opinion Lina was concerned about – ASIO’s or the Russian Church community’s – but the

Dukins were certainly aware that their associations provoked comment and concern in both circles.91 And despite his apparent nonchalance about being seen with Alekseev, Dukin also harboured some unease. Given his experiences in Sydney, it was likely an awareness of ASIO’s gaze; he was usually reluctant to give his name when asked by the Embassy clerks who transferred him to the officials, saying that he ‘wouldn’t like to say,’ ‘it did not matter,’ or that he was just ‘a friend.’92

Though both ASIO and the Russian community saw the Dukins’ associations as inherently political, it doesn’t seem that the Dukins saw themselves in such terms. Sasha did not gravitate toward groups like his old pro-Soviet milieu, nor was he involved with trade unions or labour politics. He spoke with the Australia-Soviet Friendship society in Melbourne once, but this was about Embassy business as they were meeting the Ambassador.93 On another occasion he facilitated an introduction for a trade union official with one of the Soviet commercial attachés, but this appeared to be about a commercial interest that his company had in the prospective deal.94

These were not exactly the actions of a socialist ideologue; Sasha appeared primarily concerned with maintaining his personal and business connections rather than any political imperative.

90 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Consul – Third Secretary – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 14 September 1970. 91 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 12 March 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Dukins Wedding, 10 December 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich, Third Secretary, ACT File (TS) A/1/69, 20 June 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 30 July 1970. The Dukins were clearly aware that their phone calls were listened to – Sasha mentioned this explicitly to Lina on one occasion and on others, they spoke in what appear to be deliberately vague terms. 92 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, A.C.T. File A/1/69, 7 July 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, ACT File A/1/69, 8 January 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 3 April 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 5 May 1970; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69, 7 August 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Relationship with Alexander Dukin, 22 October 1971. 93 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Australia/U.S.S.R. Society, 11 August 1970. 94 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Contact with Australian Trade Unions, 17 November 1971; Intercept Report, Dukins Associations, 17 November 1971. 146

At this point in his life, in his forties, Dukin tended to emphasise his political neutrality.

He was older and perhaps a little wiser. He told friends that he avoided religion and politics, and explained to Father Dudkin of the Canberra church that he ‘didn’t want to get mixed up in politics neither green, red or blue,’ urging the priest not to listen to the many rumours about him.95 When a Russian acquaintance pressed him about retaining connections from his Sydney days, he declared:

‘I had a lot of friends, Zhenia but I didn’t belong to white, blue or red. I know what I went through

Zhenia, and I couldn’t agree with anyone who spat and spoke evil about Russia.’96 He obviously knew that there were rumours about his past and his present, telling Zhenia that the gossip among

White Russians about him was ‘why he wasn’t suitable to be among the emigres.’97 Of course,

Sasha also knew that his phone was likely being monitored and it is possible he emphasised his neutrality for ASIO’s benefit, but he did appear to have learnt some lessons since his youthful

Sydney days – rumours about which still persisted.

In his conversations with Alekseev, though, Sasha still appeared pro-Soviet. He decried anti-Soviet protestors and expressed anger over attacks by émigrés on the Soviet Embassy, soothing Alekseev that one such incident – a fire lit in the Embassy’s hedge – was not his fault.

He even suggested that he might write a supportive article for the newspaper about it.98 Dukin also complained to his aunt that he was referred to as a ‘White Russian’ migrant in a television news report after he saved the Soviet Ambassador from drowning, telling her that he was no White

Russian.99 Lina similarly discussed anti-Soviet protests with Alekseev, when émigrés planned to picket the touring Russian ballet. She laughingly told him that their daughter Vicky was attending

‘and if those fools are there – the ones that distribute the leaflets, she said that her name will be in

95 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 9 March 1969; Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 12 March 1969. 96 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Evgeniya Glass, 29 April 1969. 97 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Evgeniya Glass, 29 April 1969. 98 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, (Consul, A.C.T. File A/1/69), 8 November 1968; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 5 March 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 18 April 1969. 99 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Aleksander DUKIN, 27 September 1970. 147

the newspaper … she’s planning to gather a mob and beat them up or something – he he!’100 Lina was perhaps also a pro-Soviet patriot of sorts, like Sasha. She told a friend that although she was not against the Russian priest in Canberra ‘who prays for the people who died fighting against the

Communists … it was one of the reasons she does not like going to church.’101

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the rumours which circulated among the Russian community about them, the Dukins’ circle of friends was not particularly anti-communist, and maintained similar connections to the Embassy. Zinaida Kukurudza was one of Sasha’s first Russian acquaintances in Canberra and also a known associate of Embassy personnel. They also socialised with Olga Lysenko and her husband Ivan. The Lysenkos were caught up in a minor espionage affair when Olga was fired from her cleaning job at Parliament House because ASIO believed she was passing government documents to Alekseev. It was Sasha and Lina who assisted her in contacting a local MP to enlist his support.102 Dukin was also close with the Glass family, Evgeniya and her late husband Alexander, who were linked with both Soviet officials and intelligence work.103 And Vicky Dukin, their daughter, married Jim Watson, an Australian whose father was apparently a card-carrying CPA member.104 Sasha also maintained a few of his old Sydney acquaintances like Stanislav Savva, Victor Gulezki, and Klavdia Tondi (his aunt), all of whom continued associating with the Russian Social Club.105 Though the Dukins surely had other

100 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 23 & 24 April 1969. 101 NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Association with the Church, 26 October 1970. 102 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Nina Lysenko, 1 April 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Ivan Lysenko's Naturalisation, 2 April 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Ivan Lysenko's Naturalization, 11 & 15 May 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Association between Dukina and Olga Lysenko, 18 May 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Olga Lysenko's Arm Chairs, 7 June 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Relationship between Olga Lysenko & Dukina, 4 August 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Olga Lysenko's Employment, 28 September 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Association between Dukina and Olga Lysenko, 6 October 1971; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Contact Between Dukina & Olga Lysenko, 6 November 1971; Blaxland, The Protest Years, 225-6. 103 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Eugenia Glass, 12 January 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 15 January 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 9 March 1969; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Evgeniya GLASS, 5 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN's Association with the Church, 3 November 1971. 104 NAA:A6119, 7044: DG ASIO to RD ACT, Controller B2, Alexander DUKIN, 17 April 1970. 105 NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy - Contact with Russian Social Club, 18 January 1968; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Soviet Embassy - Issue of Visas, 14 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 13 & 15 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7043: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV (Consul, ACT File A/1/69), 13 May 1968; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Contact 148

acquaintances and friends, especially as they became more involved with the church, they found a circle of close friends whose accommodation of the Soviet homeland and its representatives in

Australia was similar to their own.

These associations, coupled with their friendships at the Embassy – the partying, favours, and vague phone conversations on tapped lines – all begin to appear suspicious if one is looking for spies. There is no clear answer in Sasha’s ASIO file as to whether he engaged in any espionage, on either side of the Cold War front but he lived much of his life adjacent to intelligence activity and certainly had an awareness of it. He learnt from the Petrov affair and warned Alekseev off continuing to see a Russian doctor in Sydney, insisting he instead see an Australian – memories of what happened with Bialoguski had clearly not yet faded.106 He spoke with a family friend,

Evgeniya Glass, whose late husband had apparently worked for both German and American intelligence during the war, about her twenty-four-year-old daughter going to the US and

‘following her Father’s footsteps.’ Sasha remained tight-lipped on the topic of intelligence work.107

Evgeniya ranted about her daughter being forced into intelligence work and Sasha insisted (no less than five times): ‘I don’t know Zhenia, I don’t know any Intelligence Service!’108 Eventually he relented, telling her that if someone ‘selects the job of Intelligence Officer that means he must expect to die either today or tomorrow,’ and further, that ‘when I was running away, I was offered

(a job) Zhenia, - I didn’t want to and no-one forced me, it’s not true Zhenia, let no-one tell me that there’s no way out, there is another exit.’109 Perhaps this was a return to the stories Dukin had

with Trades People, 11 November 1971; NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander Dukin, 7 April 1969; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Aleksander DUKIN, 27 September 1970. 106 Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 18 April 1969, NAA:A6119, 7044. Interestingly, Dukin does not seem to have cut ties with Bialoguski straight after the defection (as some others did). Bialoguski’s diary records contact between the two men in the months after April 1954, though these interactions are dated prior to Bialoguski being outed publicly as an ASIO man, see Michael Bialoguski Diaries 1953-1984, National Library of Australia, MS 7748. For further detail on the community’s response to Bialoguski after the Petrov Affair and Royal Commission, see Chapter Eight. 107 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Eugenia Glass, 12 January 1969; Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 15 January 1969. 108 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Eugenia Glass, 12 January 1969. 109 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Eugenia Glass, 12 January 1969. Interpolations in brackets are ASIO’s, present in the original document. 149

employed in Sydney, or perhaps it was true. In any case, there were times where he appeared reluctant to explicitly acknowledge his brushes with espionage.

On other occasions, however, Sasha seemed to want to indicate that he had intelligence connections, including with Australian security. Some months after the above conversation, he rang Evgenia at 2am after ‘a few drinks with friends.’ He said that he had a relationship with

Alekseev but also ‘the Security man, Ron Dillon,’ and that both Dillon and Alekseev were aware that he spoke to the other.110 Sasha bragged that he ‘knew every department because he was an

Australian citizen and a “sheriff”,’ though Evgenia showed little interest.111 This has some echoes of his Sydney days, bragging about NKVD exploits. He did know Dillon, the head of ACT’s Police

Special Branch, though, and the two met occasionally, sometimes with Alekseev.112 The nature of their relationship is not clear, but it was common knowledge that Dillon was Special Branch chief during the 1960s and 70s, so Sasha certainly knew who he was talking to.113 A contact also reported that Sasha had a photograph of Detective-Sergeant Fred Longbottom, the head of NSW Special

Branch, in his house.114 Longbottom was also known publicly as a Special Branch man, and was a fixture at Sydney protests and demonstrations.115 An ASIO case officer surmised that ‘By displaying the photograph it is believed that Dukin was trying to impress [redacted] and give the appearance of being in touch with the Australian security authorities.’116 Dukin’s relationship with

Longbottom is also unknown, though the Detective did report on him during his Sydney days,

110 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 9 March 1969; Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 6 March 1969. 111 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 9 March 1969. 112 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Third Secretary (Consul) A.C.T. File A/1/69, 12 May 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Third Secretary, A.C.T. File (TS)A/1/69, 1 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, Alexander DUKIN, 5 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEV, Vladimir Alexandrovich (Third Secretary – Consul – A.C.T. File A/1/69), 5 October 1970; NAA:A6119, 7045: Intercept Report, ALEKSEEVs (Vladimir Alexandrovich – Third Secretary – A/1/69) FAREWELL, 3 December 1970. 113 “Police-Student Relations,” Woroni (Canberra), 5 October 1971, 8. 114 NAA:A6119, 7045: Report No [redacted], Alexander DUKIN, 10 March 1971. 115 Mark Aarons, “Scenes from my Cold War,” in What Did You Do in the Cold War, Daddy?, eds. Ann Curthoys and Joy Damousi (Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2014), 181; Andrew Moore, “'A Secret Policeman's Lot': the Working Life of Fred Longbottom of the New South Wales Police Special Branch,” in All Our Labours: Oral Histories of Working Life in Twentieth Century Sydney, ed. John Shields (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992), 194. 116 NAA:A6119, 7045: Report No [redacted], Alexander DUKIN, 10 March 1971. 150

was peripherally involved with the Petrov Affair, and could have had contact with Dukin.117 While in Canberra, Dukin’s talk of intelligence work does not appear to have spooked the Soviet officials as it did in Sydney, so was likely more limited. But living as Dukin did, in such close proximity to the world of intelligence, it seems to have become difficult to separate this from the rest of his life.

Still, these links to espionage were all largely circumstantial. If ASIO had any hard evidence against Dukin, it centred on a single incident involving Sasha, Alekseev, Yuri Tukanov, a Soviet

Commercial Attaché, and Vicky Dukin’s then boyfriend, Jim. Tukanov asked Dukin for assistance in obtaining information regarding Australia’s mining industry. In an intercepted telephone call,

Tukanov specified that he needed ‘the latest information on supply, in the general economic sense, what is the supply, how much production,’ and was particularly interested in industries like coal.118

Sasha agreed readily, suggesting that Jim, Vicky’s boyfriend, worked for the Bureau of Statistics and may be able to get such information.119 No information appears to have changed hands – the two Volodyas (Alekseev and Pluchenko, Embassy Counsellor) came over that evening to speak with Jim, but Vicky and Jim never materialised.120 This triggered a household argument, and a phone call between Vicky and Jim, where the latter indicated that he might try, but the information was confidential and outside his department.121 Then, the incident makes no further appearance in the file.

Even this provided no damning proof. Though Sasha was certainly willing to assist

Tukanov and Alekseev in obtaining the information, this was a regular part of his relationship with the Embassy officials. Tukanov was obtaining some commercial catalogues for Dukin, Alekseev

117 NAA:A6119, 7043: RD NSW to ASIO HQ, B2 Branch, Alexander Dukin, 16 January 1962; NAA:A6119, 7043: ASIO Minute Paper, Alexander Dukin, 10 February 1960; Moore, “‘A Secret Policeman’s Lot’,” 204. There was a note in Dukin’s naturalisation file that Longbottom was ‘interested’ in his case, too, see: NAA:SP1122/1, N1959/11135. 118 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Yuri Vasilievich TUKANOV, 2 April 1970. 119 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Yuri Vasilievich TUKANOV, 2 April 1970. 120 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, ACT File A/1/69, Vladimir Vasilievich PLUSHCENKO, Counsellor, ACT File P/1/130, 2 April 1970; Surveillance Report, Thursday 2 April 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Consul, A.C.T. File A/1/69, 2 April 1970. 121 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Yuri Vasilievich TUKANOV, 3 April 1970; DG ASIO to RD ACT, Controller B2, Alexander DUKIN, 17 April 1970. 151

helped to procure visas for Sasha’s friends, and Dukin provided construction equipment and recommended tradesmen for Alekseev.122 Sasha’s ASIO file is peppered with intercepted conversations about such mundanities. These were two friends, between whom favours were common, easily granted, and sometimes crossed over into their professional lives. The Tukanov incident appears to have been a favour for a friend rather than an act of assistance to the Soviet

Union.

Indeed, what is perhaps most striking about Dukin’s story is the way the social and the political are frequently entwined. Investing in the Soviet Embassy and a friendship with the KGB rezident, while simultaneously building the Russian Orthodox church, typically a hub of conservatism and anti-Soviet sentiment, seems a contradictory stance. So, it attracted suspicions of espionage and duplicity – one could seemingly not be genuinely loyal to both – and perhaps this is the Cold War’s false binary. These may not have been incompatible ideas for an orphaned

Russian DP who survived the war by fighting German invaders and fell in with other young DPs at the Russian Social Club.

While in Sydney, Sasha seemed driven by a pro-Soviet patriotism, the diasporic impulse for homeland nostalgia experienced by a generation born into the Soviet Union, who came of age during the Second World War. The fact that he insistently and steadily continued to network with

Soviet Embassy officials, particularly after the Petrov Affair and his move to Canberra, despite this initially pushing him away from the main Russian diaspora and its shared homeland, oriented

Dukin’s life toward the Left, in some form, despite any apparent incongruity. The anti-communist

Russian community, too, would have preferred that Sasha had a simpler set of loyalties but it seems that he did not see things the same way. Sasha did not, by all appearances, have a mid-life

122 NAA:A6119, 7044: Intercept Report, Yuri Vasilievich TUKANOV, 2 April 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, Third Secretary (Consul) A.C.T. File A/1/69, 12 May 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 4 November 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 20 June 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 30 July 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 6 August 1970; Intercept Report, Vladimir Alexandrovich ALEKSEEV, 14 August 1970. 152

conversion to conservatism or anti-Soviet belief. He lived with a foot in each world, continually brushing up against intelligence activities, and did not see these things as conflicting. Particularly after settling in Canberra, he was a Russian-Australian who looked to a Soviet homeland. As an

émigré during the Cold War he negotiated a political culture in which loyalty to East and West was not the norm but he continued, nonetheless. Indeed, in Dukin’s case, one could be a migrant who built part of Australia’s skyline, of its postwar economy, and also be a drinking companion and confidante to the KGB rezident, without necessarily being a spy.

153

Chapter Six Natalia & Lydia: Harbin Women in Sydney

When twenty-one-year-old Natalia Stashevska, a recent arrival from Shanghai, first attended the

Russian Social Club in the late 1940s, she would have been greeted in the basement vestibule by

Miss Freda Lang. A smartly-dressed woman of about thirty-five, Lang was the club secretary and unreservedly amiable with all new arrivals, known or unknown.1 Natalia had been born to Russian parents in Harbin, moved with them to Shanghai, but arrived in Australia alone. She had family living in rural Queensland, but had instead opted to settle in Sydney, securing an office job with the Kodak Photographic studio on George Street and renting a flat in the beachside suburb of

Coogee.2 She chose to frequent the Social Club, then led by the tenacious Augusta Klodnitskaya, who was assisted by a committee which included several women, both married and single.3 Several of these women remained (though there was a male president) when Lydia Hitrova, another young, single, Harbin-born Russian, arrived alone almost a decade later, and she similarly chose the Social

Club as her regular haunt.4

Both Natalia and Lydia left their parents, with whom they had lived their whole lives, behind in China.5 Perhaps this was female-led chain migration; both planned to scout opportunities and conditions in Australia, finding accommodation and work before sponsoring their parents’ landing permits to join them. Despite arriving at opposite ends of this wave of Russian migration,

1 NAA:SP1732/1, STASHEVSKY NATALIA NIHAILOVNA, ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia Nihailovna [Russian – arrived Sydney per Glengarry]’; Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Sydney: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955), 28-9; NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW – Volume 1’: J. Richmond Report, Russian Social Club, 13 September 1950. 2 NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich; Nominee – STASHEVSKY Michael; Maria; Natalia; nationality Russian’; NAA:A6126, 1413, ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia’: Personal Particulars Sheet, Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky. 3 Elections for the 1947 executive included a female vice-president, and young, unmarried women as treasurer and secretary. NAA:A6122, 122, ‘Russian Social Club’: Report by F. G. Galleghan, Russian Social Club, 18 November 1946; NAA:A6122, 2799: R. Gamble Report, Russian Social Club, 21 April 1950. 4 NAA:A6122, 2800, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 2’: Russian Social Club, 5 March 1957. 5 NAA:SP1732/1, STASHEVSKY NATALIA NIHAILOVNA, ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia Nihailovna’; NAA:SP908/1, RUSSIAN/GALENKOVSKY LIDIYA STEPANOVNA, ‘Lidiya Stepanovna Galenkovsky [Also known as: Hitrova, Other nationality: Born in China, Russian – Arrived Sydney per ANSHUN 3 October 1957] 1957- 68.’ 154

both women were unattached in one sense – with no spouses or children – but remained deeply connected to their families in China and less tangibly, to a Soviet homeland. Their experiences in navigating migration and the Cold War were different from their male counterparts’, but also diverged from that of married women. The deep unhappiness that both Natalia and Lydia experienced testifies to its difficulty. But both found solace and some sense of belonging in the pro-Soviet Russian community on George Street, where Russian women had an established political space; though for Natalia this was a transit stop, and for Lydia, a more permanent home.

Natalia was born in Harbin in 1926. The family were White Russians: her father, Mikhail, was an educated man who had completed two years of Law School in Odessa before being drafted into the White Army. He arrived in Harbin in 1920 as a commissioned officer with combat experience during the Russian Civil War, and worked as a restaurant manager in upmarket establishments for some decades afterward.6 Natalia’s mother, Maria, remains elusive, but was certainly Russian-born.7 Natalia was an only child, and the Stashevsky family seem to have lived comfortably in Harbin. Particularly so in the 1930s, when Mikhail managed the restaurant at the

Hotel Moderne and the family lived on the premises, in Room 208.8 The Moderne sat on Harbin’s main street, Kitaskaya Ulitsa, and was the city’s largest, most luxurious hotel. It was a haunt for

Harbin’s elite, and the Stashevskys lived cosmopolitan lives alongside both Russians and

Europeans.9 Mikhail spoke English and French as well as his native Russian. Natalia, too, learnt

English at some point while in China, and was fluent when she arrived in Australia.10

6 Gosudarstvennyĭ Arkhiv Khabarovskogo Kraia͡ (Khabarovsk Regional Archives, henceforth GAKhK): Glavnoe Biu͡ ro po delam rossiĭskikh ėmigrantov v Man’chzhurii (BREM), f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937. 7 NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich.’ Maria was born at the opposite end of the Russian Empire to Mikhail, in Vladivostok, so they likely met in Harbin. 8 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937. 9 Mark Gamsa, “The Many Faces of Hotel Moderne in Harbin,” East Asian History 37 (2011), 28; 33. The Moderne was owned by Josef Kaspe, a Russian Jew whose son, a pianist, was famously kidnapped and murdered by Russian Fascists in 1933, see: Mara Moustafine, “Russians from China: Migrations and Identity,” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 5, 2 (2013). 10 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Activities at the Russian Social Club, 12 April 1950. 155

Lydia was also born to Harbin Russians but was five years older than Natalia. Her father,

Stepan, served in the Tsarist Army but arrived in Harbin in 1911, well before the Civil War, to work on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) as a cashier.11 He remained a CER employee throughout Lydia’s childhood and adolescence, almost forty years in all.12 Her mother, Ekaterina, had a rather more interesting story. Born in Poltava, in the western regions of the Russian Empire, she had a full six years of schooling and an impressive singing voice. Ekaterina arrived in Harbin in 1916 as part of V. C. Zavadsky’s Choir and its tour of the Far East.13 There, she met Lydia’s father and deserted the choir to remain in Harbin, marrying him the same year. Lydia had two siblings: an older brother, Nikolai, and a younger sister, Iraida. The family lived a comfortable, fairly typical Russian existence in Harbin. Both Stepan and Ekaterina spoke only Russian, were involved with the Orthodox Church, and raised their children in the same manner.14 Lydia had never been to the Soviet Union, nor outside China, before she migrated to Australia some years later.15

Harbin’s Russians set up their own institutions in the city and schools proliferated, so both

Natalia and Lydia likely had a Russian education.16 We don’t know which schools Natalia attended; many Harbin Russians went to Russian émigré schools or Soviet ones, though there were also

Jewish, Catholic, and other foreign institutions. Lydia completed her final four years of school

(gymnasium) at a Russian émigré school, called the Dostoyevsky Gymnasium when she began but which became the BREM Gymnasium in 1937, under the Japanese occupation. At the émigré schools, as one pupil later recalled, ‘the young were filled with admiration for their homeland, its past, its culture, the character of its people, and believed in its great future.’17 The school had been

11 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944; NAA:A6119, 7042, ‘HITROVA, Lydia Stepanovna Volume 1’: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 12 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 13 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944; NAA:A6119, 7042: Personal Data Form, United Nations Refugee Office, Hitrova Ekaterina Mihailovna, 6 July 1959. 14 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944; NAA:A6119, 7042: Special Branch Report, HITROV, Ekaterina Mihailovna, 12 April 1961. 15 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 16 Olga Bakich, “Émigré Identity: The Case of Harbin,” South Atlantic Quarterly 99, 1 (2000): 54; 59. 17 Bakich, “Émigré Identity,” 54. 156

co-educational but during Lydia’s final two years there the adolescent boys and girls were separated, and though the Russian curriculum still predominated, it was augmented with Japanese language and civics classes.18 All school students in Harbin at this time, including Lydia and Natalia, had to do military drills, including target shooting, and bow to both the goddess at the Japanese shrine and the memorial to fallen Japanese soldiers.19

It was under such conditions that the Stashevsky family first applied, in 1937, for landing permits to migrate to Australia. Mikhail’s uncle, a farmer in Far North Queensland seems to have had no trouble acting as the Stashevskys’ sponsor; permits for Mikhail, Maria, and ten-year-old

Natalia were quickly approved. For unknown reasons they never used them, remaining in China until after the war. It was perhaps a poor fit, in any case – the urban, hotel-dwelling Stashevskys wrote that they planned to live in Queensland with Uncle Irodion and that Mikhail, the swanky restaurant manager, would become a farmer.20 Conditions were worsening for Harbin Russians under the Japanese, though. The Stashevskys, along with thousands of other Harbintsy, left their home during the late 1930s and moved south to Shanghai.21

The Stashevskys and Hitrovs were variously stateless, Soviet citizens, and Russian émigrés, depending on the year, but the families negotiated the politics of their official identities differently.

Choosing citizenship could be a political minefield for Harbintsy and many responded with a fluidity of purpose, biography, and identity akin to that of the European DPs. Many Russians, like Natalia and Lydia’s parents, had arrived in Harbin with their old Tsarist papers which continued to suit them just fine, with the extra-territorial rights that Russia maintained in the CER Zone. But, as discussed in Chapter Two, shifting control of the CER saw Russian Harbintsy become stateless in

1920 and four years later, they were offered (and in the case of CER employees, required to take)

18 Mara Moustafine, Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files (Sydney: Random House, 2002), 345; Personal communication from Mara Moustafine to the author, Sydney, 14 May 2020. That is until 1938, when many Russian schools were closed and the remaining ones took up a Japanese curriculum, see: Bakich, “Émigré Identity,” 63. 19 Personal communication from Mara Moustafine to the author, Sydney, 14 May 2020. 20 NAA:A261, 1937/910, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Irodion; Nominee – STASHEVSKY Michael; STASHEVSKY Maria; STASHEVSKY Nathalia; nationality Russian.’ 21 Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 149. 157

Soviet citizenship. Many Harbin Russians had a choice to make: take Soviet citizenship, out of patriotism or just to keep one’s job (so-called ‘radishes’: red on the outside, white on the inside); or, remain stateless as a matter of principle, despite the restricted employment opportunities and general precarity.22 The Hitrovs took up Soviet papers. They were likely ‘radishes,’ as Stepan worked for the CER, though they may have also harboured patriotic sentiment.23 The Stashevskys, on the other hand, remained stateless. Perhaps this was ideological – Mikhail, the former White officer, remaining true to his ideals – though the fact that he didn’t work for the CER likely made the decision easier.24

But within a decade, Harbintsy political identity was upended and the community further polarised by the arrival of the Japanese and their new categories of identity. The occupiers established the Bureau of Russian Émigré Affairs in Manchukuo (BREM) in 1934 to administer the Russian community. Nominally a Russian body, the Japanese installed a line of sympathetic

White Army generals and Russian Fascist Party (RFP) leaders at its helm. BREM had a mandate over identity papers, residence permits, employment cards, and travel documents: if you chose not to register with the Bureau, you could be denied opportunities in employment, education, and housing.25 The stateless Stashevskys registered promptly, taking up the official ‘Russian Émigré’ status that BREM granted.26 The Hitrovs, however, kept their Soviet passports for several years.

Stepan, Ekaterina, and Lydia’s brother, Nikolai converted to émigré status in 1938, but nineteen- year-old Lydia drew additional suspicion from BREM by holding out until 1940.27 Life became progressively more difficult for Russians who resisted registering with BREM, as various permits

22 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 96-7; Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 148. The Soviet papers issued to Harbintsy, while passport-like in appearance, were in fact residence permits. They entitled their bearers to the protection of the Soviet Consulate while living in China but not to full rights as Soviet Citizens, nor the right to emigrate to the Soviet Union. CER employees could also be Chinese citizens and some Harbintsy took up this option, though not in great numbers. 23 GAKhK: BREM, f.R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 24 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937; NAA:A261, 1937/910, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Irodion’; NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich.’ 25 Moustafine, “Russians in China,” 151; Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 341. 26 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937; NAA:SP1732/1, STASHEVSKY NATALIA NIHAILOVNA , ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia Nihailovna.’ 27 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 158

and ration cards were restricted to émigrés and Soviet citizens subjected to increasing surveillance and harassment.28 Despite this, Lydia apparently preferred to keep her Soviet citizenship during her late teens. When she graduated from the gymnasium, however, Soviet papers probably limited her options and it was with émigré status that she secured a traineeship at the Gogolevskaya

Pharmacy in 1940.29 Lydia remained an émigré until the next major shift in power, reacquiring the

Soviet passport in January 1946, a few months after the Red Army moved into Harbin.30 For both the Stashevskys and the Hitrovs, as for many Harbintsy, these decisions about papers were a matter of balancing ideals and identity with the more immediate concerns of provision and authority.

It’s difficult to tell precisely where the two families sat on the political spectrum. When registering with BREM, applicants completed a comprehensive questionnaire which, of course, asked about the subject’s politics. These responses, given in Russian, were often a reflection of what émigrés thought could be admitted to the Japanese and their RFP delegates at BREM.31

Suggested options for the political question included: liberal, socialist, democrat, republican, legitimist, monarchist, and fascist. Natalia’s father went a different way, identifying himself as a

‘Nationalist.’32 This was a vague response, but as a former White officer who had remained stateless and then registered with BREM quickly, he was probably not especially suspicious. There is a hint of an intelligence connection in his dossier, though, as BREM received information that Mikhail

‘has (or had) serious connections with the Polish Investigation Apparatus in Manchuko.’33 Lydia registered later and was a few years older than Natalia, so had to fill out her own BREM questionnaires. She wrote that she was a ‘Monarchist.’34 As Sheila Fitzpatrick has shown, this was a common response and likely the safest option for Harbintsy.35 Lydia was perhaps less keen on the

28 Bakich, “Émigré Identity,” 62; Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 106. 29 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 341; GAKhK: BREM, f.R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 30 NAA:SP908/1, RUSSIAN/GALENKOVSKY LIDIYA STEPANOVNA, ‘Lidiya Stepanovna Galenkovsky.’ 31 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 342. 32 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937. 33 GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Stashevskiĭ Mikhail Vasil’evich, 1935-1937. Interpolation is in the original text. 34 GAKhK: BREM, f.R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 35 Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War Story of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc., April 2021). 159

tsarist system than she indicated, given her later associations and her decision to keep the Soviet passport for so long. But she knew, even at nineteen, how to play it safe. Harbintsy were familiar with negotiating state power and tailoring one’s biography to the situation at hand – skills which would not be wasted in migrating to Australia.

Whether due to a resurgence of war-time patriotism or practical expediency, both the

Stashevskys and the Hitrovs applied for Soviet passports once the war was over, in 1946. The

Hitrovs were still in Harbin, where the Soviets had assumed control in August 1945, re-registering most Harbintsy as Soviet citizens.36 Things were different for the Stashevskys in Shanghai, however.

By 1946, twenty-year-old Natalia was working in an office job, while her father managed another restaurant.37 Many Russian migrants to Shanghai had a difficult time during the late 1930s and the war. Not speaking English, the lingua franca of the foreign community, they were locked out of many employment avenues and had to move into the more affordable Japanese-dominated neighbourhoods.38 The multilingual Stashevskys, however, landed on their feet and moved into the French Concession, the established centre of Russian activity in Shanghai.39

Natalia and her parents lived just off Avenue Joffre, which was ‘lined with Russian cafés serving blinis, bortsch and black bread, and stores selling Siberian furs and mementoes of “la vieille

Russie” … known as little Moscow.’40 Largely excluded by Shanghai’s Western elites, the Russian community established its own institutions and cultural life. But this was still an international treaty port city, and young people like Natalia might have contact with other Europeans at work and could go to see American films.41 The dominant image of young Russian woman in Shanghai during the 1930s is one of immorality, prostitution, and ‘taxi dancers’ but Natalia, living fairly

36 Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 153. 37 NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich.’ 38 Jayne Persian, “’The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946-47,” Australian Historical Studies 50, 1 (2019), 25; Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: the Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 160. 39 NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich’; Gary Nash, The Tarasov Saga: from Russia through China to Australia (Sydney: Rosenberg Publishing, 2002), 132. 40 Bernard Wasserstein, Secret War in Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 1998), 72. 41 Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 84-5; Wasserstein, Secret War in Shanghai, 72. 160

Figure 6.1: Natalia Stashevska, c. 1947 Source: NAA:SP1732/1, STASHEVSKY, NATALIA NIHAILOVNA comfortably with her parents and herself employed in a white-collar job, likely lived outside this world.42 Like Boris Binetsky’s family in Tientsin, the Stashevskys probably had an easier time with the Japanese occupation, as they lived in the French Concession. Soviet patriotism during the war was similarly strong among Shanghai Russians, particularly the young – some even applied for

42 Persian, “‘The Dirty Vat’,” 25; Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 88-95. 161

Soviet citizenship in the aftermath of the German invasion of their homeland, making them potentially liable for military enlistment.43 The Shanghai Soviet Club became a popular haunt for both Soviet sympathisers and others, particularly because it screened Soviet newsreels about the

European war which Natalia quite possibly went to see.44

The Stashevskys didn’t apply for Soviet passports until after the war, in 1946. But perhaps

Mikhail, the ‘nationalist’ did indeed feel a surge of patriotism with the Soviet victory. Many

Shanghai Russians enthusiastically took up the Soviet passport in the months after the war; rumours spread that Soviet Russia was changing, and well-known repatriates became ambassadors for return to the motherland.45 Shanghai was beginning to empty of foreigners and though they could have accepted repatriation along with several thousand other returnees, the Stashevskys instead re-applied for Australian landing permits in December 1946.46 Despite their urban, cosmopolitan lives as Russians in the former French Concession, Mikhail, the Shanghai restaurateur, still apparently intended to become a farmer in Australia.47 With Uncle Irodion’s sponsorship, the landing permits were approved but securing shipping out of Shanghai, then in short supply, was likely to be a problem.48 This may have been a factor in Natalia’s migrating alone; perhaps three berths on an outgoing ship were simply too much to hope for. Or maybe they were keeping their options open. Many Shanghai Russians waited to hear from friends whether the good life in the Soviet Union was as described and perhaps Natalia was similarly scouting out life in the

West. If it wasn’t so good, they could always choose the East. In any case, though they had been approved landing permits, Mikhail and Maria remained in Shanghai, farewelling their daughter as she sailed for Australia alone in November 1947.

43 Antonia Finnane, Far From Where? Jewish Journeys from Shanghai to Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 108-9; Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 222; 275; Wasserstein, Secret War in Shanghai, 76. Wasserstein notes that 1,500 Russian emigrants applied for Soviet citizenship in 1941, but none of their applications appear to have been accepted. 44 Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril. 45 Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, 253-4. 46 NAA:A261, 1946/4041, ‘Applicant – SAITZEFF Imodian Ivanovich.’ 47 The Vichy government had handed the French Concession over to the Wang Jingwei regime (the Chinese government of the Japanese puppet state) in 1943, but the area retained its international character, with French architecture, Russian shops, and European residents. 48 Finnane, Far From Where?, 184-5. 162

Perhaps Natalia never intended to live with Uncle Irodion at his farm, as she disembarked in Newcastle and seems to have made her way down to Sydney from there.49 Her first year in

Australia remains something of a mystery but by the time ASIO was established in 1949, Natalia was friendly with the resident TASS representative (and recruited MGB agent) Feodor Nosov and close with his wife, Galina.50 She had also joined the ranks of young Russians at the Social Club on George Street, which was likely where she had met the TASS couple. Like Sasha Dukin, Natalia attended the club’s Saturday night dances and film screenings. But she had come of age in

Shanghai, at the centre of Russian cultural activity in the city. Many China Russians found Australia

‘culturally barren land’ compared to their previous lives, and it seems likely that Natalia sought out the club for cultural as well as social stimulation.51 Unlike Dukin, Natalia appears to have fitted in neatly with the older, intellectual elements at the club. She became a familiar face at intimate cultural nights for the Club’s ‘inner circle,’ but also film nights at the Maccabean Hall and meetings of the Australia-Russia Society.52 She was frequently seen in company with prominent club members: the Klodnitskys, Freda Lang, Bella Weiner (chief ‘recruiter’ of DPs and future committee member), future president Razoumoff, and committee member Michael Wynn, amongst others.53 Michael Bialoguski was quite aware of the young Russian woman, reporting on

49 NAA:SP1732/1, STASHEVSKY NATALIA NIHAILOVNA, ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia Nihailovna.’ 50 NAA:A6119, 1247/REFERENCE COPY, ‘NOSOV Feodor Andreevich – Volume 2’: Statement by V. Petrov, 12 September 1954; NAA:A6126, 1413: Activities Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 1950. 51 Peter and Kyra Tatarinoff, Anatoly Konovets & Irene Kasperski-Andrews, Russians in Strathfield: A Community Profile (Sydney: The Russian Ethnic Community Council of NSW, Russian Historical Society of Australia and Australiada, 1999), 13. The Tatarinoffs were themselves Shanghai Russians and Konovets was from Tientsin, arriving in Australia via Shanghai and Tubabao in the Philippines. 52 NAA:A6126, 1413: Activities Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Activities at Russian Social Club, 12 April 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 1 May 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 9 May 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance, 4 June 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 6 June 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 27 June 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 1 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Australia-Russia Society, 1 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club N Stashinski, 10 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club Natasha STASHINSKI, 4 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha Stashevski, 11 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club Natasha Stashevski, 15 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: B2 Report, Subject:- Miss Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky, 26 October 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 29 August 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report, Subject: Klodnitsky, Mrs. Augusta, 12 October 1950. 53 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club N. Stashinski, 10 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club Natasha STASHINSKI, 4 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 27 June 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report, Subject: Klodnitsky, Mrs. Augusta, 12 October 1950. 163

her presence frequently and chatting with her to gain information on the TASS representatives.54

Natalia was invited to the Klodnitsky home by Augusta on at least one occasion, for a social Sunday afternoon with a few select Sydney Russians and the Pakhomovs.55 She was exactly the kind of new member that Klodnitskaya was looking for: young and energetic, but also keen on the discussion groups, lectures, and (Soviet) Russian culture that the club promoted.

Natalia’s circle of Sydney acquaintances also extended beyond the Social Club to other left- wingers on ASIO’s radar, likely due to her friendship with the Klodnitskys and TASS couples. She was seen in company with prominent Australia-Russia Society members – particularly Jean

Ferguson, Joan Anderson, Mark Younger, and occasionally Jessie Street – as well as the odd CPA member.56 At one film screening at the Maccabean Hall, Natalia, by introduction of the Nosovs, even met and sat by Hewlett Johnson, the visiting ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury.57 Natalia was also

‘closely acquainted’ with another Red Russian couple known to ASIO: Nina and Feodor

Phillipoff.58 Feodor had arrived in Australia from France in 1937 with the Klodnitskys, sponsoring his wife’s migration the following year, and the couple settled in Sydney.59 In fact, they lived in

Coogee, just a few blocks up the street from where Natalia came to rent her flat. Gatherings ASIO deemed ‘communist meetings’ were held at the Phillipoffs’ and the Nosovs caught the tram out from Kings Cross to visit frequently, often collecting Natalia on their way.60

54 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 27 June 1950; J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha STASHINSKI, 4 September 1950; J. Baker Report, Klodnitsky Family, 25 September 1950. 55 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, 25 September 1950. 56 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 6 June 1950; J. Baker Report, Australia-Russia Society, 1 August 1950; J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950; J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha Stashevskii, 11 September 1950. 57 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 1 May 1950. 58 NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERENCE COPY, ‘NOSOV, Feodor Andreevich – Volume 1’: Feodor Nosov, Preliminary Report, 18 May 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natalia (Natasha) Stashevsky, March 1950; NAA:A6126, 1337, ‘PHILLIPOFF aka Phillips Theodore John’: Theodore John Phillipoff and Wife Nina Victoria Phillipoff, 2 June 1950. 59 NAA:A6126, 141, ‘Nina PHILIPOFF’: Memo for DG ASIO, Phillip (formerly Phillipoff) Theodore John, 23 October 1951. 60 Apparently the Phillipoffs’ address was even sometimes advertised in Tribune. NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERENCE COPY: Feodor Nosov, Second Report, 20 June 1950; NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERENCE COPY: Feodor Nosov, Preliminary Report, 18 May 1950; NAA:A6126, 1337: Extract from Report dated 9/3/49, Espionage – Suspected Agents. 164

The Phillipoffs were much older than Natalia, close to her father’s age.61 The Nosovs were a little younger, though Galina Nosova was still sixteen years Natalia’s senior, and both childless

Russian couples took a supportive interest in the young Russian woman.62 Galina evidently liked

Natalia, and told their successors, the Pakhomovs, about this ‘rather pleasant type of girl’ who

‘always helped her at the Russian Social Club and was very obliging.’63 Natalia and Galina were often recorded chatting about personal matters on the Nosovs’ tapped phone, discussing overseas mail and Natalia’s parents in Shanghai.64 Natalia would visit Galina at their Kings Cross Flat for long afternoons, often into the evening, and the Nosovs would travel out to Coogee to visit Natalia in return.65 Both women were educated and multilingual; Galina had been a construction engineer in Russia, apparently directing the building of cottages in the Urals during the war.66 She was ‘a very intellectual wife and intelligent woman,’ interested in art, music, and literature, and enjoyed entertaining in their Sydney flat, where she hosted evenings of Russian food, music, and lively discussion.67 Nina Phillipoff, too, was a scientist educated in Edinburgh, who worked as a translator of scientific reports for academics at Sydney University and the C.S.I.R.68 Such women were likely friends for the younger China Russian, raised in urban Harbin and Shanghai’s French

Concession.

61 NAA:A6126, 141: Alien Registration Forms, Nina & Theodore Phillipoff. 62 NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERENCE COPY: Personal Particulars Sheet, NOSOV Feodor. 63 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 18 July 1950. 64 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natalia (Natasha) Stashevsky, March 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Feodor NOSOV – Natalia STASHEVSKY, 4 May 1950; NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERENCE COPY: Feodor Nosov, Second Report, 20 June 1950. 65 NAA:A6126, 1413: Activities Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: “GROUT” Report, 20 January 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance, 4 June 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: RD NSW Report, Natalia M. Stashevsky, 4 January 1951; NAA:A6119, 1248/REFERNCE COPY: Feodor Nosov, Second Report, 20 June 1950. 66 Nosova seems to have been rather formidable. One source reported to ASIO that she ‘never had any trouble with her workers’ while managing Soviet construction. NAA:A6119, 1246/REFERENCE COPY, ‘NOSOV, Feodor Andreevich – Volume 3 [contains 102 folios]’: Report NOSOV, Fedor, TASS Correspondent, No. 50; Report No. 16, Mr and Mrs NOSOV, 16 January 1950. 67 NAA:A6119, 1246/REFERENCE COPY: Report for DDG (Operations), Mark YOUNGER, 23 March 1955; Report NOSOV, Fedor, TASS Correspondent, No. 50; Report No. 16, Mr and Mrs NOSOV, 16 January 1950. 68 NAA:A6126, 1337: Memo for S.L.O., Theodore John Phillip formerly Phillipoff, 24 July 1952; Report on Oscar Andrew Bayne, June 1950. 165

Natalia was on similarly ‘very friendly terms’ with the new TASS couple, the Pakhomovs, with whom she was somewhat closer in age.69 Anna Pakhomova was only four years older than

Natalia, though Ivan was almost ten years her senior. There are no records explicitly detailing a personal relationship between Natalia and Anna, likely because ASIO had suspended technical surveillance of the TASS flat after Pakhomov spotted the listening device in the ceiling.70 They were certainly seen in company at the Russian Social Club, and elsewhere, a number of times, and the lively, fashionable Anna seems another likely friend to Natalia.71

From ASIO’s perspective, Natalia’s choice of friends, associates, and community inferred that her politics were questionable. They considered her pro-Soviet by association and a priority for war-time internment because of her company, but also her connections to family living overseas.72 Natalia was less attached to Australia than an assimilating migrant ought to have been and sought foreign connections: at the club, with her family overseas, and potentially, with the

Soviet Union. Stashevska’s own political views remain elusive. She was helpful to the TASS representatives and also the Russian Social Club committee, for whom she produced English translations of Soviet films on occasion.73 She may have viewed this as assisting the ‘Soviet cause,’ as favours for friends, or perhaps as just being polite. Galina Nosova told other Embassy staff that

Natalia was a ‘good Soviet citizen,’ (the kind of thing that set alarms bells ringing at ASIO), likely

69 NAA:A6126, 1413: B2 Report, Subject:- Miss Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky, 26 October 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: Report for PSO B2, Miss Natalia Mihailovna STASHEVSKY, 17 November 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: RD NSW Report, Natalia M. Stashevsky, 4 January 1951; NAA:A6119, 1732, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 1’: Memo from Director Sydney, Ivan and Anna PAKHOMOV, 18 July 1950. 70 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 284; NAA:A6119, 1735, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 4’: V. Petrov Statement, Margaret KENT-HUGHES, 9 December 1954; E Petrov Statement, Margaret KENT-HUGHES, 10 December 1954. 71 NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Australia-Russia Society, 1 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club N Stashinski, 10 August 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha STASHINSKI, 4 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha Stashevski, 11 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Klodnitsky Family, 25 September 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: B2 Report, Subject:- Miss Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky, 26 October 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: Report for PSO B2, Miss Natalia Mihailovna STASHEVSKY, 17 November 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 6 November 1950. 72 NAA:A6126, 1413: List 2C (ii) G, STASHEVSKY Natasha (Natalia), 14 August 1950. 73 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 18 July 1950; J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, Natasha STASHINSKI, 4 September 1950. 166

because the young woman was also talking about repatriating to the Soviet Union.74 Both Nosov and Pakhomov were indeed MGB men and collected intelligence from various contacts and sources in Sydney, some of whom Natalia herself knew.75 But though she lived in close proximity to the world of intelligence, it doesn’t appear that Natalia was directly involved or that she acted as a source for the MGB men or their wives.

Galina Nosova described Natalia as ‘reserved and rather shy,’ but she was certainly independent. She chose to live alone in Sydney, despite having the uncle in Queensland. One ASIO source suggested that Stashevska lodged with an Australian couple for a time, but the one- bedroom apartments in the Brooklyn Flats building where she lived suggest she more likely lived alone. Natalia often stayed out late at the Russian Social Club, catching the tram back from the city at midnight or later, and though she usually attended with the Nosovs or Pakhomovs, she didn’t always leave with them.76 If the TASS couples were acting as chaperones for the young woman, they were not particularly strict ones. On one occasion the ASIO man surveilling her noted that she left much later than the Nosovs with an unidentified man (though pointedly noted that he did not accompany her all the way to Coogee).77 Though Sydney no doubt had a less glamorous nightlife than Shanghai, Natalia seemed to make the most of the club’s lively dance

74 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950. 75 Jean Ferguson, Secretary of the Australia-Russia Society, for example, while not considered a recruited agent by Petrov (she held too prominent a position in progressive organisations), was given several ‘MVD Assignments’ to complete for him. Petrov could not confirm conclusively that Ferguson had passed information to the TASS representatives, but she knew about several of the TASS men’s sources, had been facilitating these connections, and perhaps, one imagines, passed some information herself. Natalia was often seen in company with Ferguson at the Russian Social Club. Stashevska was also reported to associate with Mark Younger, the Polish-Australian businessman, who was close with Nosov and mentioned under the codename ‘Yanger’ in the Venona decryptions. But neither Nosov nor Pakhomov appear to have been particularly effective intelligence men. Petrov said that Nosov did far less intelligence work than his volume of contacts suggested and Pakhomov was reprimanded by Moscow for his lack of results on more than one occasion. NAA:A6119, 896, ‘Jean Ada FERGUSON Part 3’: Summary of activities as contained in M.V.D. Documents and statements of Mr. and Mrs. Petrov; Report of the Royal Commission on Espionage (Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer, 1955), 106; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 6 June 1950; NAA:A6126, 1413: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950; Horner, The Spy Catchers, 61; 293; NAA:A6119, 1732, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 1’: Australia-Russia Society, 1 August 1950; NAA:A6119, 1247/REFERENCE COPY: Statement by V. Petrov, 12 September 1954; NAA:A6119, 1734, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 3’: Interview with Petrov at Safe House Commencing Tuesday 8 April 1954; NAA:A6119, 1733, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 2’: PAKHOMOV, Ivan Mikhailovich, from (T) SF 28/164, December 1951; NAA:A6119, 1732: Extract from RD ACT, Report Dated 4 October 1951. 76 NAA:A6126, 1413: Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance, 4 June 1950; J. Baker Report, Australia-Russia Society, 1 August 1950. 77 NAA:A6126, 1413: Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance, 4 June 1950. 167

nights. She supported herself financially with the office job at Kodak, just down the street from the Social Club. Having worked in an office job in Shanghai, she had likely taken a shorthand or typing course there and could put her skills to use in Sydney. The Australian women who worked in jobs like these were usually uniformly middle-class and from similar backgrounds.78 Natalia’s fluent English would have assisted in settling into such a workplace, but she was no doubt very different from these Australian girls, with her Russian education and experiences in China.

Another young Russian woman from Shanghai, Ella Masloff, recalled that she settled easily into her job as a secretary in Sydney: ‘I spoke English; I was liked.’79 Natalia worked consistently throughout her time in Australia and certainly had the skills to have settled in comfortably, as Ella did. She didn’t struggle with unemployment or difficult conditions (as far as we know), as industrial workers like Juris Pintans or even Sasha Dukin did. But the Nosovs told other Soviet officials that the young woman was terribly unhappy in Australia and wanted to leave.80 She applied for a visa to return to Shanghai in December 1949, but was refused permission to transit through British- controlled Hong Kong.81 Galina Nosova lamented to another Soviet official that the ‘Australians simply mock at her – they don’t give her a visa,’ though ASIO’s subsequent inquiries with the

Department of Immigration indicated that the refusal was due to the severe paucity of Shanghai- bound shipping.82

According to Galina Nosova, Natalia and her parents wanted to repatriate to the Soviet

Union.83 It seems they wanted to go together, however – Nosova thought that Mikhail and Maria would wait for Natalia to arrive in Shanghai and then all three would depart. Though life was becoming more difficult for Russians in communist-controlled Shanghai by 1950, repatriation

78 Beverley Kingston, My Wife, My Daughter, and Poor Mary Ann: Women and Work in Australia (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1975), 91. 79 Finnane, Far From Where?, 234. 80 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950; R. Gamble Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 18 July 1950. 81 NAA:A6126, 1413: Activities Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 1950. 82 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950; Report by Director Canberra for Directory Sydney, Miss Natalia Mihailovna STASHEVSKY, 18 September 1950. 83 NAA:A6126, 1413: R Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950. 168

visas for the Soviet Union had been paused and would not resume consistently until 1953.84 But

Galina thought that Natalia and her parents would ‘be able to get away more easily because her mother is working there in the Soviet (sounded like office). She is doing very important work there and knows Embassies well. They are Soviet citizens and have never changed their citizenship.’85 It appears that Natalia had presciently avoided mentioning their émigré status in Harbin but had talked about her mother, and also about a cousin who had returned to the Soviet Union. He was a surgeon and corresponded with Natalia about the good life in Moscow; he went to write his dissertation and being ‘a clever man … made a good impression there. Now he is the leader of a big department. He has a beautiful flat – his wife is a pianist.’86 With Natalia unhappy in Australia and her parents likely under increasing pressure to leave Shanghai, reports of her cousin living it up in Moscow no doubt seemed attractive to the young Russian woman.

Natalia had grown up in a community which habitually looked back to a Russian homeland elsewhere and living alone in Australia, she looked outward even more: toward her family in China, and a potential home in the Soviet Union. These overseas connections and aspirations made ASIO decidedly nervous. They noted that Natalia corresponded regularly with her mother in Shanghai, who ‘keeps her well informed regarding her Soviet contacts in China.’87 Her Muscovite cousin was a further black mark against her name, as was her apparent desire to repatriate. ASIO officers speculated that she was potentially being used for espionage purposes: perhaps she was a previously planted agent being brought home, or she was acting as a courier for one of her Soviet official friends in Sydney. When her visa was eventually approved, this drew further intelligence interest internationally. Courtenay Young, MI5’s liaison officer in Australia, had been in contact with Hong Kong’s security office about Natalia, who were aware of the young woman and ‘anxious to cover her’ if she were to pass through on her way to Shanghai.88 Young had ASIO draft a brief

84 Finnane, Far From Where?, 219. 85 NAA:A6126, 1413: R Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950. 86 NAA:A6126, 1413: R Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950. 87 NAA:A6126, 1413: B2 Report, Subject:- Miss Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky, 26 October 1950. 88 NAA:A6126, 1413: Memo from Courtney Young to Direct Sydney, Natalia Stachevsky, 1 November 1950. 169

for the MI5 officers in Hong Kong on Natalia, which concluded with the assessment: ‘There is no doubt that Natalia Stashevsky, by her associations, has shown that she is pro-Soviet and has been accepted by people who are of more than average security interest in the Commonwealth.’89

ASIO’s single-volume file on Natalia was now a potential British Commonwealth security issue but aside from monitoring her movements and checking her belongings when she passed through

Customs, there was little else to be done.

When Natalia arrived at Mascot airport on 20th November 1950 with only light luggage, in the company of an unknown man of about thirty-five, there was an ASIO officer not far behind.90

He noted that Natalia and ‘her male companion remained seated apart from the other passengers in the lounge’ and were heard to converse in both English and Russian.91 The companion embraced and kissed her as she boarded the aircraft and then watched the plane take off before returning to the city.92 This encounter caused one last stir in Natalia’s ASIO file, when the unknown man was identified as Nicholas Daghian. A ‘strange Armenian’ born in the Russian

Empire and sixteen years Natalia’s senior, Daghian had arrived in Australia via China in 1939.93

He lived only a few blocks from Stashevska in Coogee, where he operated a photographic studio and was already on record with ASIO as ‘a pro-Soviet suspected of being engaged in special activities for the Communist Party.’94 They had been seen at the Social Club simultaneously once

89 NAA:A6126, 1413: RD NSW Report, Natalia M. Stashevsky, 4 January 1951. 90 NAA:A6126, 1413: Natasha STASHEVSKY – Departure from Sydney, Australia by Air for Hong Kong, 21 November 1950. 91 NAA:A6126, 1413: Natasha STASHEVSKY – Departure from Sydney, 21 November 1950. 92 NAA:A6126, 1413: Natasha STASHEVSKY – Departure from Sydney, 21 November 1950. 93 Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon, 1987), 210; NAA:A714, 76/23586, ‘SURNAME - DAGHIAN; GIVEN NAMES - Nicholas; DATE OF NATURALISATION - 4 June 1948; PREVIOUS NATIONALITY - STATELESS; PLACE OF BIRTH - Erivan, RUSSIA; YEAR OF BIRTH - 1909; PLACE OF RESIDENCE - Coogee, NSW.’ 94 NAA:A6126, 1413: PSO B2 Report, STASHEVSKY, Natalia M – Departure from Sydney for Hong Kong, 23 November 1950. Daghian would also be called before the Royal Commission on Espionage four years later, after appearing in the Petrov documents under the code-name ‘Monch’ or ‘Monk’. Pakhomov had begun cultivating Daghian in the hope that his photographic studio could be used ‘for conspiratorial purposes’ but had not progressed to a recruitment. He was also associated with Nina Phillipoff and the Scientific Translation Bureau for whom she worked, which ASIO suspected could have been passing information from the C.S.I.R. and other similar facilities to the Nosovs. Daghian’s sponsorship of several China Russians for migration also seemed, to ASIO, potentially part of a plan to implant Soviet ‘illegals’ in Australia. Incidentally, Boris Binetsky (see Chapter 2) had also worked with Daghian at the International River Commission in Tientsin and volunteered this information when interviewed by ASIO. Report of the Royal Commission on Espionage (Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer, 1955), 266; “Naval Title Used to Sponsor Aliens, Armenian Tells Inquiry,” Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 1954, 6; NAA:A6119, 170

or twice before, but ASIO could shed no light on why Daghian might be the only Sydney Russian to farewell Natalia at the airport. In any case, this was the end of it – she flew to Hong Kong, assumedly went on to Shanghai and ASIO did not come across her again. It’s unclear where Natalia went next. Likely they did leave Shanghai, as China became increasingly hostile toward its foreign residents. If they had decided that repatriation was their best option, Australia having failed to impress Natalia, they might have held out for a few years as some other potential repatriates did, hoping for a more urban resettlement than the Virgin Lands Scheme offered.95 It’s unlikely that they were sent to join Natalia’s cousin in Moscow, as Virgin Lands repatriates were destined for the sovkhozy (State farms) in Kazakhstan, the Urals, and Siberia – so perhaps Mikhail got to become a farmer after all.96

Lydia Hitrova, meanwhile, was still living in Harbin, which had developed an increasingly

Soviet atmosphere after the war. The Red Army was met with ‘flowers and euphoria’ by most

Harbintsy and though the formal occupation lasted only until April 1946, Soviet influence was maintained by the Society of Soviet Citizens which administered the émigré community.97 The pharmacy Lydia was working for was liquidated under the Soviet occupation but, with her father’s help, she became an apprentice draughtswoman with the CER.98 She eventually qualified, and continued to work as a draughtswoman until her departure for Australia. Her father had retired in the late 1940s and the Hitrovs sub-let an empty room to supplement the family income. The family

1735: V. Petrov Statement, 12 September 1954; NAA:A6126, 1337: Report by R. Gamble for B2, 17 August 1950; Manne, The Petrov Affair, 210; NAA:A6126, 1414, ‘BINETSKY, Boris Nicholas’: Report on Interview with Boris Nicolaevich BINETSKY, 28 March 1955. 95 See the case of eighteen-year-old Ella Masloff (referenced above) and her parents, all fairly pro-Soviet Shanghai Russians who seriously considered repatriation to the Soviet Union but resisted the rural resettlement of the Virgin Lands campaign as they were ‘urban people.’ Ella ‘wept for three days’ when she had to surrender her Soviet passport upon leaving China. They eventually migrated to Australia in 1954. Finnane, Far From Where?, 219; 226-7; 233. 96 Laurie Manchester, “Repatriation to a Totalitarian Homeland: The Ambiguous Alterity of Russian Repatriates from China to the USSR,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 16, 3 (2007): 361. 97 Mara Moustafine, “The Harbin Connection: Russians from China,” in Shen Yuanfang and Penny Edwards, eds., Beyond China: Migrating Identities (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2002), 79. 98 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 171

Figure 6.2: Lydia Hitrova, c. 1940s Source: GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. was somewhat smaller now anyway: Lydia’s sister married a Russian Tatar and moved with him to

Istanbul, and her brother, estranged from the family after he allegedly stole from a church, died in unknown circumstances in 1947.99 It was effectively just Lydia, now almost thirty years old, and her parents. According to a few migrants who later reported to ASIO, Lydia had an active life outside work and home. One said she was involved with Harbin’s Soviet Youth Organisation

99 NAA:A6119, 7042: Special Branch Report, HITROV, Ekaterina Mihailovna, 12 April 1961; NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961; GAKhK: BREM, f. R-830, Khitrova Lidiia͡ Stepanovna, 1942-1944. 172

(SSM), and another reported that she gave political lectures for the Soviet Women’s Association at the Soviet Club.100 The latter informant also proffered that Lydia had ‘ardently carried out propaganda’ among Harbintsy during the Virgin Lands Campaign.101

In the 1950s, Harbin’s increasingly Soviet atmosphere was deliberately developed by authorities to acculturate Harbin Russians for their future lives in the Soviet Union.102 Many young people, particularly, embraced this. They joined youth organisations, including the SSM (a

Komsomol-modelled group), and engaged with the Soviet films, books, and newspapers which abounded. This pro-Soviet enthusiasm was particularly pronounced for those educated in Harbin’s

Soviet-style schools in the postwar period. Natalia Koschevsky, one such Harbinka, received letters from her aunt living in Australia about frivolous things like ‘kittens, puppies and chocolate’ which she recorded disdainfully in her diary (‘What nonsense!’). She had bigger things on her mind, like her careful study of communist literature and nostalgia for her Soviet homeland, which she had never seen.103

Lydia had already completed her education, but she had previously resisted giving up her

Soviet citizenship and it seems likely that she, too, was caught up in the wave of Soviet patriotism and culture which swept Harbin. Many anti-Soviet Russians had softened a little toward the Soviet

Red Army after they liberated Manchuria and most Harbintsy were Soviet citizens when the Virgin

Lands Campaign began in 1954.104 Some repatriated enthusiastically as the campaign began but for those who remained in Harbin, Soviet pressure to repatriate increased as time wore on. This was

‘a combination of stick and carrot’: if Harbintsy chose the Soviet Union, they could liquidate their assets and take property to their Socialist homeland unrestricted, but emigrating elsewhere entailed leaving with little.105 SSM members who had not registered for repatriation were increasingly

100 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report No 30480, Lydia HITROVA, 30 October 1958; Report, Subject:- HITROV, Lydia Stepanovna, 16 March 1961. 101 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report, Subject:- HITROV, Lydia Stepanovna, 16 March 1961. 102 Bakich, “Émigré Identity,” 66. 103 NAA:A6119, 7250, ‘BINETSKY, George Nicholas Volume 1’: Diary Entries from 1951: Chronicle of Events, Koschevsky Family. 104 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 362; 373; Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 153. 105 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 386-7. 173

‘reviled at special meetings and expelled’ as traitors to their homeland.106 Lydia may have expounded repatriation when the Virgin Lands campaign began, but for reasons that remain elusive, she did not actually repatriate herself. It’s possible that, like Natalia Koschevsky, she remained due to her parents’ hesitancy or unwillingness to return.107 As time wore on and Lydia was still in Harbin, there is a good chance that she was expelled from the SSM.

By 1957, Lydia still had not repatriated and when she made the decision to emigrate overseas, was dismissed from the CER.108 She continued to work as a draughtswoman for a few

Chinese firms while waiting for sponsorship and shipping. Like Stashevska, she left her parents behind in Harbin. By this time, obtaining an exit permit to leave for somewhere other than the

Soviet Union was often difficult, so perhaps her parents planned to follow when they had received such permits.109 Or perhaps she too was scouting out life in Australia before her parents decided whether to follow. Armed with a Soviet passport, an IRO travel certificate, and sponsorship from the World Council of Churches, she travelled alone, disembarking in Sydney just shy of a decade after Natalia.110

Though her Alien Registration forms noted a few acquaintances or relatives in Australia,

Lydia, like Natalia, chose to settle in Sydney where she apparently knew no-one.111 She didn’t list an employer, so it seems that she also had to search for a job upon arrival. Hitrova found

106 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 387. 107 Koshevsky lamented having to leave ‘for this devilish Australia’ and bemoaned her parents’ lack of understanding that she simply had to go to her Soviet homeland (see: NAA:A6119, 7250: Diary Entries from 1951: Chronicle of Events, Koschevsky Family). Lydia was not a teenager so her response was likely somewhat different but she may have wanted, or felt a responsibility, to stay with her parents in Harbin, if they did not want to repatriate. 108 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. Most Soviet citizens who resisted repatriation were dismissed from Chinese state-run enterprises, see: Moustafine, “Russians from China,” 153. 109 Nicholas Pitt, “White Russians from Red China: Resettling in Australia, 1957-59,” (Masters Diss., Australian National University, 2018), 31. 110 NAA:SP908/1, RUSSIAN/GALENKOVSKY LIDIYA STEPANOVNA, ‘Lidiya Stepanovna Galenkovsky’; NAA:A6119, 7042: DG ASIO to Liaison Officer Hong Kong, Lydia Hitrova, 9 November 1960; NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. Her sponsor was apparently a Pole named Waclaw Stepien, whom Lydia later told ASIO she had never met, but had been arranged for her by the WCC. 111 NAA:A6119, 7042: Personal Data Form, United Nations Refugee Office, Hong Kong, Lydia Hitrova, 29 April 1957. ASIO thought she might have been living in Newcastle at one point, but she didn’t mention this when they asked for her residence history in an interview, so it seems likely that they had simply assumed this based on the accommodation guarantee on her Alien Registration form. 174

accommodation first in Cabramatta, and then moved to Strathfield in 1960.112 She soon secured a job at an Electrical Engineering firm, so was likely employed as a draughtswoman once again, and worked there steadily for some years.113 Lydia, too, found life in Australia difficult. When ASIO interviewed her in 1961, she was forthcoming about her isolation and despondence upon arrival, volunteering that she:

found it very difficult to adjust herself to the local living conditions. She said that she lived all her

life with her family and that upon her arrival here she did not know where to go and what to do as

she had no relatives or friends … at the early stages of her stay here, she suffered from fits of

depression. She thought that she would never see her mother again and never master the English

language to the extent that she could take an interest in the life of Australian people.114

Lydia had lived her whole life in Harbin and spoke only Russian when she arrived in Australia.

Sydney must have been alien and imposing for this young woman who spoke no English and had never lived alone. Naturally, Lydia began considering two potential remedies for her isolation: finding other Russians in Sydney, and repatriation to the Soviet Union.

An ASIO source who had arrived on the same ship as Lydia reported that the young woman intended to repatriate as soon as she could secure a landing permit for her mother, because she could not stand Australia’s ‘living conditions.’115 This raised a red flag above her name for the security service – disliking Australia’s ‘living conditions’ evidently indicated to ASIO that this woman hated capitalism and wanted leave for the Soviet Union as a result. Capitalism was not the most pressing issue, however. Lydia struggled most with learning English and a far more universal complaint: missing her mother.116 As she told ASIO, she thought her mother would likely be sent back to the Soviet Union, as pressure increased for the Harbintsy to leave, and repatriation would

112 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HIROVA, 27 February 1961. 113 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. Though she may, of course, have been employed for office duties rather than draughting, as this was an engineering firm and Lydia had a decade’s worth of experience in technical drawing, it seems likely that she would have been employed in this capacity. 114 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 115NAA:A6119, 7042: Report No. 36061, Lydia HITROVA, 13 July 1959; C Branch Report for PSO B1, Assessment: HITROVA, Lydia, 20 October 1960. 116 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 175

be the only way to re-join her family.117 Lydia’s father had died in February 1960 and around the same time, she received news that her sister in Istanbul, too, had died.118 Lydia’s mother was now her only living relative.

Grappling with the complexities of learning English, Lydia sought solace in the familiar and began ‘looking for some place where Russians gathered and where she could obtain some

Russian literature.’119 She told ASIO that she went to the Russian House (by this time in Strathfield) for a number of dances, but had some difficulty there, as new Harbintsy could only attend with a

Club member and it was ‘extremely difficult for a new arrival to become a member.’120 When she heard about the other club on George Street, Lydia began to attend there, particularly for the

Soviet films and theatrical activities. This was likely a better fit, in any case. Even members of the

Strathfield club acknowledged that the young arrivals from China with no experience of pre- revolutionary Russia found the anti-communist club’s culture ‘completely foreign.’121 Lydia emphasised to ASIO, as one might expect, that her involvement with the Social Club was strictly apolitical. She ‘explained that she visited the Russian Social Club not because of her pro-Soviet attitude, but simply because of her longing for things Russian.’122 She denied outright that she was a club member and emphasised a reputation of political neutrality, stressing that she could not be outwardly anti-Soviet, as anything she said could get back to the authorities in Harbin and jeopardise her mother’s chances of emigrating.123

This was why Lydia was speaking to ASIO in the first place – they were interviewing her in connection with her mother’s landing permit. Ekaterina’s life in Harbin was increasingly difficult after her husband’s death. She was just getting by, sub-letting rooms of the family home and selling property to raise funds, and Lydia sent her parcels to help. Simultaneously, conditions in Harbin

117 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 118 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 119 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 120 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 121 NAA:A6122, 2818, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 10’: S.F.O. B2 to B2, Information Received from Sir Wilfred Kent-Hughes, Arkady Morosow, 19 March 1969. 122 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 123 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 176

were worsening for foreigners as Chinese authorities’ hostility and policing of their lives became increasingly intrusive.124 Lydia had secured the support of a local MP for her mother’s landing permit and told ASIO that her ‘sole ambition now was to bring her mother out here; to settle down in Australia permanently and to become naturalised.’125 Her explanations evidently had their intended effect with the two officers who interviewed her: one commented that Lydia ‘impressed us a good type of migrant.’126 They accepted her explanation about visiting the Social Club as

‘reasonable enough’ and deemed that any thought she had of repatriating was perhaps ‘born out of a fit of depression due to loneliness.’127 They approved the landing permit and after Ekaterina’s persistence with the Chinese authorities earnt her an exit visa, she arrived in Sydney in April 1961, planning to live with her daughter in Strathfield.128

Ekaterina was interviewed by Special Branch (likely at ASIO’s behest) as she arrived in

Sydney. Though asked about Lydia’s activities several times, Ekaterina backed her up unequivocally and ‘emphatically denied that her daughter, while in Harbin, had been associated with any Soviet organisation and had carried out any political activities there. The daughter was a

God-fearing girl who spent most of her time at home.’129 Special Branch were unconvinced by

Ekaterina, however, and the interviewing officers reported that: ‘Mrs Hitrov is cunning, but pretending to be a simple-minded woman.’130 In considering the report, ASIO commented further on Ekaterina’s good secondary education and posited that though she herself was not ‘politically

124 Moustafine, Secrets and Spies, 388-9. 125 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report No. 36061, Lydia HITROVA, 13 July 1959; Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 126 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 127 NAA:A6119, 7042: ASIO Minute Paper, Lydia HITROVA (Sponsor), 7 March 1961. 128 NAA:A6119, 7042: DG ASIO to RD NSW, HITROVA, Lydia, 9 March 1961; NAA:A6119, 7042: Report for DG ASIO, Lydia Stepanovna HITROVA, (Mother) Ekaterina Mihailovna HITROVA, 15 May 1961; NAA: SP908/1, STATELESS/HITROVA EKATERINA M., ‘Ekaterina M Hitrova [Other nationality: Born in Russia, Stateless – Arrived Sydney per TJILUWAH 28 April 1961].’ 129 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report for DG ASIO, Lydia Stepanovna HITROVA, (Mother) Ekaterina Mihailovna HITROVA, 15 May 1961; Special Branch Report, HITROV, Ekaterina Mihailovna, 12 April 1961. 130 NAA:A6119, 7042: Special Branch Report, 12 April 1961. 177

conscious … her daughter may well have been active in the Soviet Citizens’ Association … But the mother was not prepared to admit this during the interview.’131

It was not just the European DPs who knew to alter their biographies for the benefit of governments, security services, and migration officials. Harbin Russians had had experience with this, from the Japanese and BREM, to Soviet authorities, Chinese authorities, and the UN Refugee

Office in Hong Kong. In order to keep a job, get a permit, and access resources or education,

Harbintsy had been making the right statements, shedding citizenships, and shifting political identities for decades. And though Lydia might well have been ‘a God-fearing girl who spent most of her time at home’ in Harbin, she had changed her habits in Sydney. She apparently never missed

Soviet film screenings or performances by visiting Soviet artists, attending the Russian Social Club regularly.132 Despite living only a ten-minute walk from the Strathfield Russian Club, Lydia chose to travel in to the Social Club at George Street and was reported to ASIO as remaining ‘very pro-

Soviet.’133

Lydia had lied to ASIO outright, too. She was indeed a member of the Russian Social Club when they interviewed her in 1961, with a current membership card and dues recently paid.134 She was also listed as club library subscriber and remained an important part of the Social Club for at least the next two decades.135 She may or may not have been a believer in Soviet Communism, and may or may not have been involved with the Soviet Citizens’ Association in Harbin; these are unknown parts of her story. But Lydia was certainly less than upfront in her interview with ASIO, altering her biography to suit her primary objective at that point: getting her mother to Australia.

131 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report for DG ASIO, Lydia Stepanovna HITROVA, (Mother) Ekaterina Mihailovna HITROVA, 15 May 1961. 132 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report, Subject:- HITROV, Lydia Stepanovna, 16 March 1961; Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961. 133 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 27 February 1961; Report, Subject:- HITROV, Lydia Stepanovna, 16 March 1961. 134 NAA:A6119, 7042: Report No. 49423, Russian Social Club – Membership List 1960/61, 20 September 1961. 135 NAA:A6122, 2802, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 4’: Report No. 282/62, Russian Social Club, 11 July 1962; NAA:A6119, 7042: Extract from an article written by Erasm LEVITSKY in the section titled: "In Our Club" from the magazine, "DRUZHBA" No. 4 (Nov.) edition of 1983. 178

Lydia told ASIO that ‘she gradually became accustomed to life in Australia’ after finding the Russian Social Club and its Russian-speaking community, and she continued to develop strong roots in Sydney after her mother’s arrival.136 The following year, 1962, she married Oleg

Galenkovsky, a recent Harbintsy arrival.137 Oleg, too, became a significant part of the Russian Social

Club so either they met there, or Lydia took him along. They moved to Burwood and Lydia began assisting with publication of the Social Club’s journal, Druzhba, from the mid-1970s. She would become an important part of its editorial committee and the work gradually brought her into contact with officials of the Soviet Consulate in Sydney, who assisted in obtaining material for the journal.138 Increasingly, Lydia appeared to be a Russian-Australian: though she looked to a Soviet homeland, she had settled into life in Sydney and was actively engaged in the affairs of an Australian

(migrant) community.139

Though they arrived in Australia almost a decade apart, Natalia and Lydia had somewhat similar journeys. They both arrived alone as young, single women, perhaps with thoughts of chain migration, or of checking out life in the West before their parents decided whether or not to repatriate to the Soviet Union. Or they sought independence but finding themselves isolated in

Sydney’s foreign environs, wanted to re-join their parents. Neither had difficulty finding stable employment and both were able to continue the work they had done in China. They weren’t drawn to pro-Soviet associations by their working conditions or economic situation but rather, personal isolation and marginalisation from both Australian and anti-communist Russian communities.

136 NAA:A6119, 7042: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961. 137 Galenkovsky actually arrived in Sydney on the same date and the same ship as Ekaterina Hitrova. NAA:A6119, 7042: Support Operation, Lydia Stepanovna GALENKOVSKY (Fully Identified) nee HITROVA, 24 February 1978; NAA:SP908/1, RUSSIAN/GALENKOVSKY OLEG OLE-GOVICH, ‘Oleg Ole-Govich Galenkovsky [Other nationality: Born in china, Russian – Arrived Sydney per TJILUWAH 28 April 1961]’; NAA:SP908/1, STATELESS/HITROVA EKATERINA M, ‘Ekaterina M Hitrova.’ 138 “Obshchestvennye Organnizatsii: Russkii obshchestvennyi klub v Sidnee (ROK),” Avstraliada, 51 (2007); NAA:A6119, 7042: Intercept Report, Druzhba – 56/8/87, 29 March 1978; Intercept Report, Russian Social Club – 3/2/249, Druzhba – 56/8/87, 14 January 1978; Extract from an article written by Erasm LEVITSKY; Intercept Report, USSR Consulate General – Contact with Unidentified Persons, 9 June 1977; Intercept Report, USSR Consulate General – Contact with Unidentified Persons, 1 July 1977; Intercept Report, Lydia GALENKOVSKAYA, Nikolay Ivanovich DENISENKO (D/22/23), 16 January 1978; Intercept Report, Druzhba (56/8/87), 3 April 1978; Intercept Report, Druzhba – 56/8/87, 21 July 1978. 139 It’s likely that Lydia became naturalised at some point, but there is no record of this in her ASIO files – probably due to the gap in surveillance of her between 1962 and 1977. 179

Both women considered repatriation to the Soviet Union. In the end, this seems to have won out for Natalia and she left, but Lydia remained and set down roots. Both, at different times, chose to locate their social lives primarily at the Russian Social Club. We know that Lydia felt she could more easily attend the Social Club than join the Strathfield group, catching the tram or bus into

George Street despite living only a few blocks from the other club. It’s harder to tell what Natalia’s thoughts were. But one imagines that the Social Club, with its tenacious female president and strong, unmarried (even divorced!) women on the committee, where young women could attend without being chaperoned by a member, was likely a logical, attractive choice for Natalia. The

Social Club appears to have been a less conservative environment, which was perhaps appealing for a young woman who had grown up in an urban, metropolitan environment in Harbin, and come of age in cosmopolitan Shanghai. Natalia chose to associate closely with Soviet officials early on, while for Lydia this came later.

To ASIO, restless young migrant women looking for connections – with pro-Soviet

Russians, Soviet officials, family in China, and perhaps a Soviet homeland – were particularly concerning. They were potential agents or couriers for Soviet intelligence. And even if they weren’t spies, such transnational connections were hardly going to help these women settle down and become well-assimilated New Australians. But both women had grown up in a fluid political environment, observing the rise and fall of Japanese, Soviet, and Chinese authorities all within their relatively short lives. They knew enough about state power to change their biographies and statements to keep themselves safe or gain what they wanted. They had also never seen the

Russian, or Soviet, homeland, growing up with other people’s memories and then a wave of war- time Soviet patriotism as they reached their late teens. Perhaps they arrived as Soviet sympathisers and thus felt at home in the Russian Social Club’s pro-Soviet milieu. Or, they were politically ambivalent but the Social Club’s culture, films, and events were more familiar, as young, second generation China Russians. In either case, they negotiated the politics of the Sydney Russian community and the Australian state, and still settled on the Social Club as their preferred milieu.

180

Chapter Seven Jacob: ‘a Jew first and foremost’

In 1962, Jacob Horowitz wrote to Leslie Haylen, Labor Member for Parkes, requesting the MP’s intervention in the matter of his naturalisation, after his applications were denied. Horowitz asserted: ‘I assure you, I have always been a loyal citizen of Australia and I am really quite mystified that we have not been officially recognised as such.’1 Though it was true that the Horowitz family had not received an explanation for their rejected applications, Jacob likely had some idea of the reason. The letters he wrote to politicians on both sides of the aisle suggested as much. A lawyer by training, to each MP he outlined different aspects of his biography which might have designated him a security risk.2 Jacob’s experiences in the Soviet Union during the war and overlapping identities as both a Jewish man and a Pole had influenced his political activities in Australia, resulting in potentially suspect loyalties which had indeed impeded his application. As ASIO’s officers laboured to define and assess his politics, exchanging piles of letters and memoranda with the Department of Immigration, Jacob would wait over a decade for naturalisation.

Jacob was one of five children, born in 1903 in the hamlet of Majdan, Galicia.3 He was the son of a farmer but was well-educated, sent to larger towns and cities to complete his schooling during the 1920s. He attended secondary school in Stanisławów some 300 kilometres from

Majdan, completed his law degree at the university in Lvov, then went on to a doctorate in

Krakow.4 Horowitz eventually settled in Horodenka in 1930, a modestly-sized town in Eastern

1 NAA:A6119, 6325, ‘HOROWITZ, Jacob (aka Kuba) Volume 2’: J. Horowitz to L. Haylen, 12 June 1962. 2 NAA:A6119, 6325: Horowitz to Haylen, 12 June 1962; NAA:A6119, 6325: L. Bury to B.M. Sneddon, 24 April 1967; NAA:A6980, S201380, ‘HOROWITZ Jacob’: W.M. Jack to A.R. Downer, 17 October 1958; NAA:A6980, S201380: S.D. Einfeld to A.R. Downer, 1 March 1963. 3 NAA:A6119, 6324, ‘HOROWITZ, Jacob (aka Kuba) Volume 1’: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Jacob and Dora Horowitz (Naturalisation), 13 October 1959. Majden is in present-day South-Eastern Poland, but at the time of Jacob’s birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the First World War it would become part of the Second Polish Republic. 4 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. Stanisławów would be renamed Stanislav in 1944, when it became part of the Soviet Union. The city is now called Ivano-Frankisvk and is in present- day Western Ukraine. 181

Poland which was home to a substantial Jewish community.5 There, he set up a law practice and within a few years had married Dora, a schoolteacher from north-western Poland.6 Both were children during the First World War and had grown up as Jewish Poles in border regions passed between powers during the early 20th century. They were perhaps used to such shifts in authority so when the Soviets annexed Horodenka as part of Western Ukraine, under the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, they carried on with their lives. Like other Jewish residents, they perhaps greeted the Red

Army optimistically, as it appeared preferable to the Nazi alternative in the Western regions.7 Many

Poles moved eastward under the Soviet occupation: voluntarily, with the offer of work, or unwillingly, under arrest or as part of large-scale deportations.8 But Jacob managed to secure a job in Horodenka with a Soviet-controlled law firm. 9 Though they must have seen friends and neighbours go, life seems to have proceeded in relative comfort for the Horowitzs.

Everything changed in mid-1941, however, with the German invasion. Fatefully, Jacob and

Dora were swept up in the massive, chaotic Soviet evacuation of the new front, and managed to leave with the Red Army on 1st July 1941.10 They were just in time – the Soviets abandoned

5 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; Alexander Kruglov and Martin Dean, “Horodenka,” in Geoffrey P. Megargee and Martin Dean, eds., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 780. 6 NAA:A6119, 6324: Precis of Application for Naturalization, Horowitz Dora, 23 May 1957. Dora was born in Pomerania, then part of the German Empire, which would form part of the so-called ‘Polish Corridor’ constituted after the First World War. 7 John Goldlust, “A Different Silence: The Survival of More than 200,000 Polish Jews in the Soviet Union during World War II as a Case Study in Cultural Amnesia,” in Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick and Atina Grossmann, eds., Shelter From the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 39- 40. 8 Edele and Warlik estimate that the Soviets removed a total of between 101,600-115,600 Polish Jews from the region by coercive means (deportation, arrest, or conscription). Mark Edele and Wanda Warlik, “Saved by Stalin? Trajectories and Numbers of Polish Jews in the Soviet Second World War,” in Edele et. al., eds., Shelter from the Holocaust, 102-5. 9 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 10 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 6325: Report No. 38669, Kuba Horowitz, 12 November 1959; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Annexation, Evacuation, and Antisemitism in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946,” in Edele et. al., eds., Shelter from the Holocaust, 137. Very few Jews were able to leave Horodenka before it fell to the Nazis due to a severe lack of transportation, see Kruglov and Dean, “Horodenka,” in Megargee and Dean, eds., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia, 780. Edele and Warlik have no lower estimate of how many Polish Jews were evacuated from the western borderlands but approximate an upper ceiling of 210,000 across the whole frontier, when there had been around 1.3 million Polish Jews living in the Polish territory annexed by the Soviets in 1939. Edele and Warlik, “Saved by Stalin?,” 103. 182

Figure 7.1: Jacob Horowitz, c. 1940s Source: NAA:A9626, 783

Horodenka the next day and under the Nazis, the town’s Jewish population was decimated.

German security police shot 2,500 of Horodenka’s Jews in a nearby forest and the remainder were transported to Belzec Concentration Camp. By September 1942, the Horowitzs’ former home was declared Judenrein (cleansed of Jews).11

11 Kruglov and Dean, “Horodenka,” in Megargee and Dean, eds., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia, 780-1; Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 32-4. 183

In general, Soviet authorities did not set out on a rescue mission to save Poland’s Jews from Nazi persecution, but the Soviet Union did provide rights and some relief to the Jewish refugees within its borders, where many thousands then survived the Holocaust.12 Jacob and Dora travelled with the Red Army as far as Poltava, in Eastern Ukraine. The Soviet Evacuation Council had planned for specific groups and nationalities to be evacuated to particular regions, but amid the steady streams of people on the roads – soldiers marching toward the front, the displaced away from it – evacuees often made their own choices.13 The Horowitzs left the army and travelled to

Stalingrad via Kharkov, likely by train and on foot, passing through evacuation centres set up along the route which provided food and temporary shelter.14 Jacob later said that they travelled for forty-six days.15 Either by choice or official direction, the Horowitzs moved through the Caucasus toward the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, where they spent the war alongside thousands of other evacuees, refugees, and former deportees.16

Jacob later said that he spent the war ‘moving freely about’ in the Soviet Union.17 His, and

Dora’s, exact movements are unclear; they mention being in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, and perhaps even Moscow at one point, but appear to have settled in Kokand, a smaller city in eastern

Uzbekistan.18 Many of Soviet Central Asia’s cities were melting pots during the war, where large numbers of Poles and Polish Jews, Soviet evacuees from cities like Moscow, and local peoples still adjusting to sovietisation lived alongside one another. Polish evacuees like the Horowitzs were joined by former Polish prisoners and deportees, moving toward the more temperate climates of

12 Some of the Soviet elite, particularly the Jewish intellectuals who later led the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, were advocating for the need to prevent a decimation of Jewish culture. But the idea of ‘Soviet sanctuary’ for Jews at risk of Nazi persecution was generally not a part of the discussion within the Soviet Union. Fitzpatrick, “Annexation, Evacuation, and Antisemitism,” 138-40. 13 Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War (New York: Cornell University Press, 2009), 76; 136-8. 14 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 130; 133. 15 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 16 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 136-7. 17 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 11 September 1950. 18 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, 11 September 1950; NAA:A6119, 6325: Extract from Operation “Whimbrel” Report, 16 December 1960; NAA:A6119, 6325: J.M. Gilmour to Assistant Director, Operation "Whimbrel"- Debriefing, Jacob and Dora Horowitz, 3 May 1962; NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 184

Central Asia as they were amnestied.19 Most remembered fairly limited contact with their Uzbek neighbours, to whom Jews were often an unknown quantity, but the influx of evacuees and refugees also saw an upsurge in antisemitism in some areas of Central Asia.20 But Jewish culture and communities thrived, nonetheless. Uzbekistan saw many Jewish weddings, funerals, prayer groups, and synagogue services – though one had to be careful about the latter in some areas, as open religious observance could be risky.21 Jewish culture was maintained, particularly Yiddish literature and newspapers, and Jewish political life was preserved.22

Evacuee life in Soviet Uzbekistan was not always easy. Work was generally plentiful but wages were not typically high and Poles often struggled the most.23 Jacob, then an experienced lawyer, was mobilised as a railway labourer in Kokand.24 He did quite well for himself, rising to the position of foreman, in charge of sixty employees at a Soviet Transport Department factory.25

Possibly he spoke Russian when they arrived but he was certainly fluent by the war’s end, and later spoke of an abiding love for the Russian language, culture, and people – particularly, as he saw it, their ‘frankness.’26 This is an interesting assessment, given other Polish Jews’ recollections. Many expressed confusion regarding Soviet Jews’ closed countenances, their Soviet ‘double-speak,’ and their lack of frankness.27 But despite differences in wealth and social status, and the Soviet Jews’ abiding caution about interacting with foreigners, the two Jewish groups did connect at times and in Jacob’s case, evidently with some success.28

19 Keith Sword, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939-1948 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 45-6. 20 Goldlust, “A Different Silence,” 60-1; Fitzpatrick, “Annexation, Evacuation, and Antisemitism,” 142. 21 Natalie Belsky, “Fraught Friendships: Soviet Jews and Polish Jews on the Soviet Home Front,” in Edele et. al., eds., Shelter from the Holocaust, 167-9. 22 Atina Grossmann, “Jewish Refugees in Soviet Central Asia, Iran, and India: Lost Memories of Displacement, Trauma, and Rescue,” in Edele et. al., eds., Shelter from the Holocaust, 201; Belsky, “Fraught Friendships,” 171-2. 23 Goldlust, “A Different Silence,” 58; Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 149. 24 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 6325: Report No. 38669, Kuba Horowitz, 12 November 1959. 25 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 26 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 1080, Political, Mr. Horowitz - associate of Mrs. A. Klodnitsky, 28 March 1952; NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 6325: Report No. 38669, Kuba Horowitz, 12 November 1959. 27 Belsky, “Fraught Friendships,” 173-4. 28 Belsky, “Fraught Friendships,” 166-73. 185

Horowitz’s other interactions with Soviet Russians were likely through his work with the

Union of Polish Patriots (Związek Patriotów Polskich, ZPP). Set up in 1943 by Wanda Wasilewska, a

Polish socialist writer with close personal ties to Stalin, the ZPP gradually took over organisational responsibility for Poles in the Soviet Union.29 It also had broader, pro-Soviet goals: preparing appropriately-credentialled Poles for roles in a future socialist Polish government, and improving

Polish refugees’ perceptions of the Soviet system.30 As such, ZPP representatives visited Polish workers in Soviet factories to discuss their country’s future, distributed additional food and clothing among the refugees, and opened schools for Polish children, which provided education with a Soviet flavour.31 Jacob was apparently involved with one such ZPP program in Kokand, later recounting that he was charged with the care of 160 Polish children there.32 They were not always welcomed by Poles – Zyga Elton, another ZPP worker in Uzbekistan, recalled there being an ‘atmosphere of distrust,’ and that some Poles considered the ZPP ‘a kind of Quislinguesque grouping.’33 But Jacob was impressed by the support that the ZPP received from the Soviet authorities and appears to have become an important figure in the local organisation, as secretary and then chairman (presumably of the Kokand branch).34 The ZPP employed and administered

Poles, but as a Soviet-sponsored body, gave Jacob a taste of Soviet Russians and pro-Soviet ideas.

In all, Jacob seems to have enjoyed his time in Soviet Uzbekistan, or at least looked back on it fondly. Indeed, though conditions could be harsh for the refugees, Uzbekistan often seemed far from the war and afforded such luxuries as consistent access to electric lighting.35 And in Jacob’s experience (which had not included arrest or deportation), Jews appeared well-treated the Soviet

29 Fitzpatrick, “Annexation, Evacuation, and Antisemitism,” 147. Relations between the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and the Soviet Union broke down, at which point the ZPP assumed greater responsibility for administering Poles in Soviet territory. 30 Albert Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics, the return of Jewish Refugees to Poland, and Continued Migration to Palestine, 1944-1946,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26, 1 (2012), 70. 31 Goldlust, “A Different Silence,” 65; Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics,” 70-1. 32 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 33 Zyga Elton, Destination Buchara (Melbourne: Dizal Nominees, 1996), 243-4. 34 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 6325: Extract from Operation “Whimbrel” Report, 15 December 1960. Andrzej Szeminski, Polish Consul-General in Australia from 1957-9, certainly thought that Jacob’s ZPP role had been a significant one. 35 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 198. 186

Union.36 He had an active life in Kokand and seemed to enjoy his work – both at the railway factory and with the ZPP. On the domestic front, the Horowitzs welcomed their first and only child in Kokand in 1944, a son named Alexander.37 But though they were surrounded by Poles and Jews in Uzbekistan, they did not have their own extended families there. In 1945, as the war drew to a close and the opportunity arose, Dora repatriated to Warsaw with her infant son to join her family, of whom a significant number had survived – three brothers, a sister, and her mother.38

Jacob, however, stayed on in Kokand for a number of months, likely as part of the ZPP’s repatriation efforts, returning Poles and Polish Jews to Poland.39 He joined Dora in Warsaw as repatriations neared completion and the ZPP wound up its operations, in July 1946.

Jacob, however, had only one brother remaining. His two sisters and father had died in

Russia and he lost his other brother to the war.40 Nonetheless, Horowitz settled into what he later called a ‘very comfortable life’ in Warsaw.41 He worked as a clerk for the Jewish Central Committee and managed to practice law part-time on the side. He also joined a ‘Polish Labour Party,’ seemingly inspired by his time in the Soviet Union.42 Dora’s family wanted to leave Europe and she with them, but Jacob was reluctant.43 Perhaps she took matters into her own hands while she waited for him to return from the Soviet Union – landing permits were secured for the family with the Sydney Jewish Welfare Society’s assistance and issued as Jacob arrived in Warsaw. They didn’t

36 NAA:A6119, 6325: Report No. 38669, Kuba Horowitz, 12 November 1959. He did note, however, that this was not the case in Ukraine. 37 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 38 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 39 Kaganovitch, “Stalin’s Great Power Politics,” 67; 72. The new Polish Provisional Government set up this population exchange deal, but Polish Jews were apparently added to it due to a request made by the ZPP and the influence of its founder, Wanda Wasilewska. Fitzpatrick, “Annexation, Evacuation, and Antisemitism,” 147. 40 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. Jacob didn’t give any further detail regarding the circumstances or cause of his sisters’ and father’s deaths in this interview. 41 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 37773, Jan Feiwol, 11 September 1959. 42 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. ‘Labour Party’ is how Jacob referred to it later, in 1959, when being interviewed by ASIO. It’s difficult to know what he meant. In postwar Poland, before its dissolution, the ZPP worked with the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), which would later merge with the Polish Socialist Party to form the Polish United Workers Party that would govern Communist Poland until 1989. If it was the PPR that Jacob joined, then he also lied to ASIO when he denied ever having joined a communist party anywhere. It’s also possible though, that Jacob was referring to Polish People’s Party (PSL) which was non-communist and centrist. But, given his ZPP involvement the PPR seems a more likely candidate. 43 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959; Report No. 37773, 11 September 1959. 187

leave immediately, however, spending the next year in Warsaw and visiting France in early 1948.44

But Dora’s insistence evidently trumped Jacob’s reluctance, and they stepped off a plane in Sydney with four-year-old Alexander in August 1948.45

With the sponsorship of the Jewish Welfare Society quite possibly came a ready-made introduction to Sydney’s Jewish community. Syd Einfeld, member of the NSW Jewish Board of

Deputies and Jewish Welfare Society, regularly met postwar refugees disembarking in Sydney and assisted them in settling in.46 They were soon established in the Jewish community, in any case.

Within a year or so of arriving, Jacob was actively involved with two different Jewish organisations and the Russian Social Club.47 He found work where he could; beginning in a knitting factory, he eventually purchased his own knitting machine and set up a small manufacturing business in

Newtown.48

Jacob quickly became involved in the newly established Sydney Council to Combat

Fascism and Anti-Semitism. The Council had grown out of the earlier left-leaning Jewish Unity

Association and its magazine publication, Unity, primarily as a response to concerns about resurgences of antisemitism locally and internationally.49 The group wasn’t exactly at the centre of the Jewish community: it had already seen conflict with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies before

Horowitz’s arrival and this continued intermittently.50 It was not an explicitly progressive

44 NAA:A6119, 6324: Precis of Application for Naturalization, Horowitz Dora, 23 May 1957; Precis of Application for Naturalization, Horowitz Jacob, 23 May 1957. 45 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 5636, Political, Jacob Horowitz, 3 August 1953; NAA:A6119, 6325: Leslie Bury to B.M. Snedden, Commonwealth Parliament, 24 April 1967. 46 Rodney Smith, “Einfeld, Sydney David (Syd) (1909-1995),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed 19 September 2020, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/einfeld- sydney-david-syd-23419. Einfeld would later become a Labor MP and also supported the Horowitzs’ subsequent application for naturalisation when it was rejected. 47 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 11 September 1950; J. Baker Report, Film Evening – Maccabean Hall, 23 October 1950. 48 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report for Director Sydney, Benzion Horowitz, 6 April 1950. 49 Max Kaiser, “Between Nationalism and Assimilation: Jewish antifascism in Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s,” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2018), 38; Suzanne Rutland, “Creating Intellectual and Cultural Challenges: The Bridge,” in Marianne Dacy, Jennifer Dowling, and Suzanne Faigan, eds., Feast and Fasts: Festschrift in Honour of Alan David Crown (Sydney: Mendelbaum, 2005), 327; Nate Zusman, “‘Unity’, A Magazine of Jewish Affairs,” Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal 9, 5 (1983): 341-2. 50 Rutland, “Creating Intellectual and Cultural Challenges,” 329. The Board of Deputies had refused to grant the Unity Association affiliation and an amount of animosity lingered. Some Deputies saw the Council as a competitor to the Board’s Public Relations Committee and remained suspicious of its links to communism, see: Zusman, “‘Unity’,” 348. 188

organisation, but its leaders were generally associated with the Left. Key activists included Julian

Rose, council president from December 1948; vice-president Hyam Brezniak, an active

Communist Party of Australia (CPA) member; and secretary Nate Zusman, who was active in communist ‘fronts’ and close with prominent Jewish communists and Australian Labor Party

(ALP) figures.51 The Council was not CPA-controlled, as ASIO supposed, nor were its members uniformly communist sympathisers.52 But it does appear to have maintained closer links to the

CPA than some similar organisations, such as the Russian Social Club, and many of its members were stridently pro-communist and pro-Soviet.53 Jacob likely joined around 1949 and routinely attended meetings at the Maccabean Hall and private homes, usually held fortnightly or weekly throughout 1952 and 1953.54 He was elected to the finance committee in September 1952, then promoted to treasurer and by 1953, was reported as one of the Council’s ‘main elite.’55

The Council was primarily in the business of antifascism and campaigned actively against antisemitism and for government policies which combatted it. Newly installed as president in 1949,

Julian Rose wrote to Calwell with the Council’s concerns regarding the screening of DPs in Europe

51 “Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism Annual Meeting,” The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, 23 December 1948, 6; Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 93; NAA:A6122, 1881, ‘Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti- Semitism – ASIO File – Volume 5 [202pp.]’: Intercept Report, Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, 8 & 9 January 1964; NAA:A6122, 1882, ‘Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism – ASIO File – Volume 6 [34pp.]’: Intercept Report, Nathaniel Zusman [Redacted], 22 July 1966; NAA:A6119, 6325: Note for Director B1, Jewish Board of Deputies NSW, 27 July 1962. 52 Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 92-4. 53 The Council’s 1948 treasurer, Gordan Hertzberg, for example, was also a suspected CPA member, and the elected committee included an S. Moston, who seems likely to have been Simon (Sid) Moston – prominent NSW CPA member and then-husband of Bella Weiner, CPA activist and Russian Social Club figure. See: NAA:A6119, 1386/REFERENCE COPY, ‘WEINER, Bella aka MOSTOV, aka MOSTYN, aka WAJNER, Bella val Berta’: Report for Deputy Director SA, Simon Moston/Sid Moston/Sid Mostyn, 20 January 1944. Committee member Maurice Allen had been a CPA member during the war, as well as Chairman of the Jewish Section of the Russian Medical Aid and Comforts Committee (a forebear of the Russian Social Club). In the latter position he attempted to cultivate links with Solomon Mikhoels, chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the Soviet Union. See Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 92; 96; NAA:A6122, 155 REFERENCE COPY, ‘Jewish Unity Association’: R. Williams Deputy Director to Director Canberra, Extract on Jewish Unity Association from C.I.S. Sydney NSW, 14 May 1948, Extracted 3 August 1951. My thanks to Max Kaiser for this reference. 54 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. ASIO doesn’t appear to have had a consistent informant within the Sydney Council, nor within the left-wing Jewish community more broadly, prior to 1952. Reporting on this community began primarily when Michael Bialoguski began attending such events. Quite possibly, Jacob attended often prior to 1952. 55 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957; Extract for Horowitz J. File from NSW "Q" 4531, 21 May 1953. 189

– he relayed reports they had received from the incoming ships of ‘unrepenting Nazis’ on board and outlined the Council’s purpose, concluding that:

It is because we are convinced that some elements intent on spreading the brutal Hitlerite

philosophy have unfortunately entered this country and are a danger to our Australian way of life

that we feel the matter should be brought to your notice. Like you we are anxious to eliminate all

kinds of prejudice and to help make new Australians happy in this land.56

Both the Sydney Council and its Melbourne cousin were concerned with alerting Australians to migrant antisemitism and former Nazis arriving as DPs, and lobbying the government on its immigration policy.57 Their claims about the DPs were based on real fears and reports; there were incidents of antisemitic abuse by Baltic DPs in Australia’s migrant camps and Mark Aarons estimates that several hundred former Nazi war criminals were indeed resettled in Australia.58 Their broader campaign launched subsequently against all German migration was controversial, but attracted support. One public meeting they held at the University of Sydney was attended by approximately 200-300 people, including between twenty-five and thirty non-Jews.59 Jacob, still a recent migrant himself, was a part of this campaign: he represented the Sydney Council on the issue at a 1952 Board of Deputies meeting and was a speaker at one of the Council’s public meetings.60 There was often a civil liberties type of flavour to the Sydney Council’s campaigns, too, and various efforts were conducted opposing Menzies’ attempts to ban the Communist Party in

1951 and the Rosenbergs’ execution in 1953.61

56 NAA:A434, 1949/3/29470, ‘Sydney Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism – Security Screening of Displaced Persons’: Julian Rose to A.A. Calwell, 30 November 1949. 57 Philip Mendes, “Jews, Nazis and communists down under: The Jewish council’s controversial campaign against German immigration,” Australian Historical Studies 33, 119 (2002): 78-82; 88; NAA:A434, 1949/3/29470: R. Williams, Deputy Director CIS, to Commonwealth Migration Officer, 1 December 1949. 58 Jayne Persian, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 156-7; Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome: Australia, A Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals since 1945 (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2020), 32. 59 Archive of Australian Judaica (henceforth AAJ), Fisher Library, University of Sydney: The Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism Collection (JCCFASC), Microfilm Reel 2: Minutes, correspondence and newsclippings: Executive Meeting Minutes of Melbourne Council, 19 September 1950. 60 Jacob presented his talk in Yiddish at the public meeting. NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 61 Newsletter published by the Melbourne and Sydney Jewish Councils to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, No. 13, August 1950, NLA N 296.05 NEW; AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 3: Jewish Council Meeting Minutes: Executive Meeting Minutes for Melbourne Council, 3 June 1952; NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob 190

Most of the Sydney Council’s attention, however, was focused on fighting local antisemitic incidents. The council maintained a Vigilance Committee which sought and received reports of antisemitism from the local community. Jacob frequently attended these meetings and by 1953, was tasked with overseeing all of the committee’s ‘general work.’62 The committee would assess each report, informing relevant police and political figures, launching legal action in some cases, and publicising the incidents. These efforts sometimes extended overseas, too. When the Sydney

Council caught wind of antisemitic pamphlets from Sweden that were being circulated in Sydney, the Melbourne Council wrote to not only the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, but the World

Jewish Congress in Sweden, about combatting the pamphlets’ spread.63

The two councils were quite connected between 1948 and 1953, working together on campaigns, which likely brought Horowitz into the orbit of some of Melbourne’s left-wing Jewish figures. The Melbourne Council was generally more influential and it did seek to assist the Sydney organisation by sending speakers and resources, and producing a joint newsletter during 1950.64

This cooperation culminated in an interstate conference held in Sydney in 1952, where talks by speakers from both councils covered such topics as the extent of antisemitism in Australia, organisational issues for antifascist activists, and developments in Germany.65 It was at such events that Horowitz likely associated with prominent left-wing Jewish figures like Judah Waten, Norman

Rothfield, and Sam Cohen. Jacob’s associations also brought Dora into this milieu, as she, too,

& Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957; NAA:A6119, 98 REFERENCE COPY, ‘BREZNIAK, Hyam’: File Note, Brezniak Hyam, 22 March 1955. For example, at a 1953 Vigilance Council meeting which Horowitz attended, the Council drafted a cable sent to President Truman protesting the Rosenbergs’ execution. 62 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 63 AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 2: Executive Meeting Minutes of Melbourne Council, 15 August 1950 & 22 August 1950. The Melbourne Council has been the subject of some detailed scholarship, see for example: David Rechter, “Beyond the Pale: Jewish Communism in Melbourne,” (Masters Diss., University of Melbourne, 1986), Philip Mendes, “The Melbourne Jewish Left, Communism and the Cold War. Responses to Stalinist Anti-Semitism and the Rosenberg Spy Trial,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49, 4 (2003): 501-516 and Philip Mendes, “The Cold War, McCarthyism, the Melbourne Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, and Australian Jewry 1948- 1953,” Journal of Australian Studies 24, 64 (2000): 196-206. 64 AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 2: Executive Committee Meeting Minutes of Melbourne Council, 26 October 1948, 16 November 1948, 21 December 1948, 17 August 1949, 21 March 1950 and 19 September 1950; AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 3: Executive Committee Meeting Minutes of Melbourne Council, 13 July 1952 and 29 July 1952. 65 AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 3: Interstate Conference Agenda provided 6 March 1952, Executive Meeting Minutes of Melbourne Council. 191

attended some of the council’s meetings and events – including a few smaller meetings at private homes, larger public meetings at the Maccabean Hall, and a reception held for Waten.66

The Horowitzs were also involved in the Jewish community more broadly. Jacob became part of the Jewish Volkscentre (or Folk Centre) soon after settling in Sydney.67 The Volkscentre was essentially a Yiddish-centred cultural organisation, established in anticipation of large numbers of European Jews migrating after the war.68 Its founders included a broad spectrum of Bundists,

Zionists, and communist sympathisers. Horowitz was among the new leaders who emerged in the postwar period and became a significant member.69 But in 1953, the organisation split along political lines. A group of left-wing sympathisers including Horowitz, Hyam Brezniak, Severyn

Pejsachowicz, and Shimon Cappe lost their bid for the leadership and subsequently moved out of the Volkscentre to establish a rival body – the Peretz Centre.70

The Peretz Centre was also a Yiddish cultural organisation but appears to have had more pronounced political overtones. The group’s leadership was thoroughly left-wing and unsurprisingly, given the presence of Horowitz and Brezniak, maintained close links with the

Sydney Council. Cappe and Pejsachowicz were also postwar migrants from Poland who had been involved in left-wing movements since their youth.71 Pejsachowicz had survived the war and

Holocaust in the Soviet Union, where he, like Horowitz, felt he had been well-treated.72 The Peretz

Centre typically met in the Maccabean Hall, like the Sydney Council, and ran an ‘active cultural programme’ until moving back into the Volkscentre around 1955.73 Jacob was similarly involved in setting up the Jewish Peace Council, which, like the broader Australian Peace Council, included

66 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 67 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Jacob and Dora Horowitz (Naturalisation), 13 October 1959. 68 Nate Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, First Fifty Years, 1941-1991 (Sydney: Jewish Folk Centre Library, 1993), 3; 9. 69 Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, 9. 70 Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, 11. 71 Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, 48; Interview by Phillip Joseph with Severyn Pejsachowicz, 27 April 1995, Sydney, Australia, Sydney Jewish Museum Shoah Collection. 72 Interview by Phillip Joseph with Severyn Pejsachowicz, 27 April 1995. 73 Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, 11. 192

a host of left-wing and pro-communist personalities.74 In Sydney, Jacob became an established and active member of the Jewish community but was primarily drawn to its left-wing quarters and individuals. During the early Cold War, such organisations saw sporadic conflict with the Jewish community’s anti-communist elements but this does not seem to have pushed Jacob to the margins

– indeed, he ended up serving on the NSW Board of Deputies.75 Melbourne’s Jewry experienced a fairly intense early Cold War, but Sydney’s appears to have been milder; though there was periodic conflict between the Council and the Jewish Executive and splinter groups like the Peretz

Circle did appear, fewer deep ideological fissures resulted.

Sydney’s left-wing Jewish community was also connected more broadly with émigré leftists

– many of its key figures were also a frequent presence at the Russian Social Club. Horowitz later told Leslie Bury, Federal Liberal Party MP, that he was introduced to the Social Club in 1949 by

Bialoguski himself.76 Bialoguski, also of Polish-Jewish extraction, was ingratiating himself with the

Australia-Russia Society and NSW Peace Council, which also hired the Maccabean Hall, and it is likely that Horowitz met him at some such event there.77 Bialoguski took to attending some meetings of the Sydney Council, too, and was part of a delegation to Canberra to request clemency for the Rosenbergs from the US Ambassador.78 In the same letter to Bury, Horowitz asserted that upon arrival he spoke only a little English and ‘joined the Russian Club largely … for companionship.’79 He told Les Haylen the same, that his interactions were ‘in the affort [sic.] to meet people of similar cultural background and to have access to reading matter in Polish, Russian,

74 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957; David McKnight, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 114. Horowitz told ASIO in 1959 that despite attending the Jewish Peace Council, he was never a member, however. 75 NAA:A6119, 6325: Note for Director B1, Jewish Board of Deputies NSW, 27 July 1962. 76 NAA:A6119, 6325: Leslie Bury to B.M. Snedden, 24 April 1967; NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. Bury also supported Horowitz’s naturalisation when it was rejected on security grounds and it was in this context that Horowitz admitted to his contact with Bialoguski. 77 Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Sydney: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955), 30. 78 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 19840, Dr Kuba Horowitz, 18 June 1957; Hans Kimmel, Sydney’s Jewish Community: Materials for a Post-War (II) History, 1951-1953 (Sydney: Hans Kimmel, 1955), 149. Interestingly, Bialoguski did not appear to otherwise identify as Jewish. It’s not generally brought up in ASIO’s assessments of the doctor, nor did he self-identify as such though he appeared to be attempting to infiltrate the Jewish Left too, see: Bialoguski, The Petrov Story. 79 NAA:A6119, 6325: Leslie Bury to B.M. Snedden, 24 April 1967. 193

and Jiddish.’80 This was undoubtedly true – like Lydia and Natalia, or Boris and Sasha, his association with the Social Club was at least partly cultural. But as with his associations in the

Jewish community, Horowitz was drawn to and most comfortable in the left-leaning, progressive

émigré milieu.

Horowitz attended all kinds of Social Club events, from political and musical lectures to literary evenings and the ever-popular film screenings.81 Within a year, he and Dora became members and in January 1952, Jacob was elected to the committee.82 He was active, consistently attending meetings throughout 1952 and 1953. He argued with Senia Chostiakoff at a 1953 meeting about removing the requirement for committee members to be Russian speakers, stating that the old policy was ‘undemocratic.’83 Approaching fifty, he was not one of the young DP members who came solely for the cabaret dances but likely fit in with the club’s older intelligentsia. Its pro-Soviet take on Russian culture should have suited Jacob, who had grown to love such things during the war. Augusta Klodnitsky thought so, suggesting him as an appropriate candidate for a private cultural discussion circle to be formed from the Social Club.84 He also, like many prominent club members, was frequently seen with the TASS representatives, and in particular, appeared ‘to be on very good terms with the Nosovs,’ with whom he was seen to have ‘long and intimate talks.’85

Jacob socialised widely at the club; his fluent Russian allowed him to engage in the lingua franca and thus with most members. But he also attended with fellow Jewish left-wing activists. He was often seen at the club in company with his Sydney Council colleague, Hyam Brezniak and

80 NAA:A6119, 6325: J. Horowitz to L. Haylen, Sydney, 12 June 1962. 81 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 82 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957; NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 1’: Report No. 214, Russian Social Club; NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. It is also possible that Dora was a Social Club Committee member – she certainly attended Club meetings during 1952, but it’s unclear if these were committee meetings or general ones. 83 NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 5631, Russian Social Club, 31 July 1953; NAA:A6122, 2799: Report No. 7975, Russian Social Club, 19 April 1954; NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 84 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 19840, Dr Kuba Horowitz, 18 June 1957; J. Baker Report, Function at Russian Social Club, 14 November 1949; Report No. 1080, Political, Mr. Horowitz – associate of Mrs. A. Klodnitsky, 28 March 1952. 85 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 26 March 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950. 194

Hyam’s wife, Paula.86 He also attended with fellow Peretz Centre leader Severyn Pejsachowicz.87

The Social Club and left-wing Jewish communities were clearly connected, primarily by these figures who frequented both, but also by their shared use of space. The Maccabean Hall belonged to the Jewish Welfare Society and was the Sydney Jewish Council’s main base of operations, plus a frequent venue for the Peretz Centre. And the Social Club hired it too, for larger film screenings and functions.88 The Sydney Council would then hire the Russian Social Club’s basement rooms, when they hosted fundraising dances and social events.89 Horowitz appears to have been one of the major conduits between the two communities. He was consistently involved on the committees of both the Social Club and Jewish organisations and was frequently nominated (or volunteered) to approach the club on behalf of the Sydney Council regarding an upcoming or potential booking.90

Indeed, these various Sydney organisations were a set of overlapping communities.

Horowitz also attended at least some of the Australia-Russia Society’s events and socialised with two of its key figures, Joan Anderson and Jean Ferguson.91 But it was the overlaps with the

Communist Party and its members which really put Horowitz on ASIO’s radar. They recorded him as a ‘communist member’ of the Social Club, a characterisation which was a product of his associations.92 In addition to a litany of friends who were suspected of communist sympathies, some of his closest associates were CPA members, most notably Hyam Brezniak, and Bella

Weiner, also a close friend, who worked with Horowitz in the left-leaning Slovene Association.93

86 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 18 August 1950; J. Baker Report, Function at Russian Social Club, 14 November 1949. Paula Brezniak was also the sister of prominent Melbourne communist, Bernie Taft. 87 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 29 August 1950. 88 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 11 September 1950; J. Baker Report, Film Evening – Maccabean Hall, 23 October 1950; Zusman, Jewish Folk Centre, 11. 89 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 90 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 91 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 10 August 1950. On one of these occasions he was also seen with Natalia Stashevska, from Chapter Six. 92 NAA:A6112, 2799: Report No. 5631, Russian Social Club, 31 July 1953. 93 Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 93; NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 19840, Dr Kuba Horowitz, 18 June 1957; Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 311; NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 195

It was an interaction with Horowitz himself, however, which apparently provided the proof that he was a CPA member. During an Australia-Russia Society screening of the film

Alexander Popov at the Maccabean Hall, Horowitz got to talking with Bialoguski. Jacob described the strong progress of the Sydney Council and expressed concern about Menzies’ anti-communist bill.94 Horowitz appeared relieved when the doctor said he thought that the government wouldn’t declare anyone a party member without definitive proof. Bialoguski reported that Horowitz then

‘mentioned to me several members of the Russian Social Club Committee whom he stated were not Party members, and from the tone of his conversation he inferred that he himself was.’95 Many subsequent security assessments of Horowitz thus stated that he was very likely a CPA member, though ASIO were never able to gain further confirmation on this point. When asked directly in a later interview, Jacob would deny membership of the Communist Party of any country.96

Of course, it is possible that Horowitz was a CPA member but had the foresight to lie to

ASIO about it. The CPA had Jewish committees and Jacob’s associates included leading Jewish

CPA members, like Weiner and Waten, so it is not inconceivable that he, too, joined. 97 But many

Jewish communist sympathisers, particularly those who were not-yet-naturalised migrants, avoided joining the party due to fears about their precarious status and the possibility of deportation.98

Considering his later battle for naturalisation, it seems likely that Horwitz was of the latter category.

The politically-active postwar migrant’s position in Australia was particularly delicate until she or he had secured naturalisation. Horowitz was clearly inclined toward the Left and was pro-Soviet prior to the mid-1950s, but even as evidence mounted that his beliefs on Soviet communism had changed, Bialoguski’s ‘inference’ would continue to haunt Jacob’s security assessments.

The Petrov Affair sent waves through Horowitz’s interconnected communities but does not appear to have affected his politics significantly. As discussed in Chapter One, the Royal

94 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Film Evening – Maccabean Hall, 23 October 1950. 95 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, 23 October 1950. 96 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 97 Macintyre, The Reds, 311. 98 Geoffrey Levey & Philip Mendes, Jews and Australian Politics (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004),72. 196

Commission’s public revelations about the infiltration of the Russian Social Club shook many members of these communities. Horowitz continued to attend Social Club meetings throughout

1954, but an ASIO source reported in May that he was ‘a very worried man indeed.’99 He told the informant, confidentially, that:

We are very concerned as to who was responsible for getting Petrov to go over to the Australian

authorities. Petrov had been very friendly for a good while with a certain Dr. Boulski [Bialoguski]

… who is an outstandingly brilliant and capable man with a domineering personality. This doctor

became a very close friend of Petrov and, we suspect, led Petrov astray by introducing him to the

women and liquor of the social life of Sydney. We suspect Boulski of having been in the employ

of the Australian Security Service throughout the period of his association with Petrov, and we

suspect it was Boulski who was responsible for converting Petrov.100

Horowitz had reason to be worried, of course. Though there was no record of him speaking with

Petrov, he knew Bialoguski well and had told the doctor much about his activities in the Jewish community.101 This concern did affect Jacob’s associations – he gradually withdrew from the Social

Club after the Affair. It was perhaps Dora who was cautious; she told her husband ‘We should not attend the Russian Social Club as we will be under suspicion.’102 He did resign from the committee, but it wasn’t a clean break: both Horowitzs still attended the Russian National Day celebrations at the Social Club that November, as invited guests.103 Further, Jacob’s involvement with the Sydney

Council was not affected, nor did he break with his communist-affiliated friends and associates, like Brezniak.104

Suspicion within the community seems to have increased generally. Any other informants would of course need to be identified and interactions adjusted accordingly. Jacob’s assessment of

99 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 100 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 101 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Kuba Horowitz, 26 May 1950; J. Baker Report, Mark Liebesan, 26 May 1950; J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 11 September 1950; J. Baker Report, 23 October 1950. 102 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 103 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. Apparently ‘attendance was by the presentation of a folded printed pamphlet which took the form of an invitation, and which had been sent to those whose presence was sought.’ 104 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 197

Bialoguski’s role, reported in May 1954, was perceptive. No public attention had yet been thrown on Sydney’s left-wing Russian or Jewish communities, nor had Bialoguski’s work for ASIO become public knowledge. But Horowitz, and presumably others from the Russian Social Club and Jewish community who had known Bialoguski well, suspected much earlier that the ‘brilliant’ and

‘domineering’ doctor had betrayed them to ASIO and been Petrov’s downfall. It wasn’t until

Bialoguski’s own testimony at the Commission in September 1954 and his autobiographical spy thriller published in tabloid papers in 1955 that the depth of his deception became public knowledge. This must have been an anxious time for Horowitz and others like him, but his politics appear to have changed only in the years which followed, with the general tumult experienced by the Left during 1956-7.

The Horowitzs’ initial application for naturalisation in 1957 triggered a scramble for information within ASIO, resulting in a report containing over 75 security-related points for consideration. Many of these related to information gathered by Bialoguski but Jacob’s record continued well into 1955, mostly noting his Sydney Council activities.105 ASIO’s B1 Branch

(Counter-subversion) noted the length and consistency of his ‘adverse record,’ particularly his suspect associations and supposed CPA membership: they assessed thus that he was a committed communist. Further, the Horowitzs had been caught in a lie. Both claimed on their applications to have lived in Poland their whole lives, judiciously avoiding any mention of the Soviet Union. But

ASIO knew about their wartime residence and highlighted the discrepancy with interest.106 And the guilt of the husband was apparently shared by the wife: B1 deemed that since Dora had joined

Jacob in some of his activities, she likely shared his convictions.107 Jacob hadn’t been recorded adversely since 1955, two years earlier, but B1 branch put this down to the Sydney Council’s

105 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 106 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 1080, Political, Mr. Horowitz – associate of Mrs. A. Klodnitsky, 28 March 1952. 107 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. 198

disintegration and their loss of regular informants rather than a change of heart.108 ASIO HQ agreed and the Horowitz family were denied their naturalisation and a landing permit for Jacob’s brother.109

But by the next month, ASIO had a new report. Horowitz had been visited by the new

Polish Consul-General in Australia, Andrzej Szeminski. In the absence of a Soviet Embassy, ASIO suspected the Polish Consulate might be used for Soviet espionage so were keeping a close eye on it, and Szeminski’s meeting with Horowitz was immediately noted.110 In the very same report, however, was intelligence from another informant:

Horowitz has described himself as being a broken-hearted communist. He is very upset about

certain anti-Semitic actions in the U.S.S.R., also the behaviour of the Russians during the recent

incidents in Hungary. Horowitz is an avid reader of Communist literature.111

In the wake of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, sections of the West’s Left shifted, and Horowitz with them, as activists responded to mounting evidence that

Soviet Communism had an authoritarian streak. For many left-wing Jews, the Doctors’ Plot of the early 1950s and the antisemitic campaign it triggered caused particular disillusionment.112 In a later

‘bitter attack on the Soviet Union’ which ‘appeared genuine’ to the informant, Horowitz also criticised Soviet suppression of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, which he believed was due to the author’s Jewish origins.113 Horowitz’s belief in the Soviet Union as he had experienced it – a haven for Jews – had begun to crack.

108 NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1, 26 June 1957. The Sydney Council operated somewhat intermittently during the latter half of the 1950s, eventually closing around 1960, despite various efforts to revitalise it. See: AAJ: JCCFASC, Microfilm Reel 3. 109 NAA:A6119, 6324: T.H.E. Heyes, Secretary DOI, to DG, AG's Department, "D Branch", Jacob Horowitz and wife Dora, 10 September 1957; C.C.F. Spry to T.H.E. Heyes, Horowitz Jacob, Horowitz Dora, 13 September 1957. The brother would later make it to Australia with an alternative sponsor. 110 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 461; NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 21954, Dr Jacob Horowitz, 8 October 1957. 111 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 21954, 8 October 1957. 112 Not for all left-wing Jews, however. This was a particularly vehement criticism of the Melbourne Council: they would condemn the Rosenbergs’ Trial but not the Doctors’ Plot. This convinced some that their communist loyalties trumped their Jewish ones. See Mendes, “The Melbourne Jewish Left, Communism and the Cold War,” for further details on this conflict. 113 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 32441, Jacob Horowitz, 13 February 1959. 199

Zionism, the other political issue which split the Jewish community during the 1950s, doesn’t get a mention in Horowitz’s file. It’s thus difficult to know where he stood regarding Israel.

Leading up to 1948, left-wing Jewish antifascists, like those on the two Jewish Councils, generally supported Israel in line with the Soviet Union’s reversal of its anti-Zionism, seeing it as an extension of their campaign against antisemitism.114 Sydney figures like Brezniak and Zusman became increasingly sceptical once the state of Israel was established, seeing the international anti- imperialist fight as the higher objective, but never made any serious campaigns against Israel or

Zionism.115 Perhaps this was why the question of Israel never arose in Jacob’s file – the milieu in which he mixed discussed it less than other sections of the Jewish community.

Horowitz’s associations did shift somewhat, with his politics. He became involved with the Federation of Polish Jews, which was apparently ‘non-political and inclined toward anti- communism.’116 Jacob himself described the organisation to ASIO as ecumenical, assisting ‘all

Polish people.’117 Further, when Horowitz was initially rejected for naturalisation, Tom Dougherty, then a NSW parliamentarian but also the aggressively anti-communist secretary of the Australian

Workers’ Union (Jerzy Bielski’s employer at the time, see Chapter Three), wrote in support of his application.118 One imagines that Dougherty would not have supported the application of a migrant he believed to be a convinced communist. Horowitz does not appear to have moved toward the Jewish Bund as he became disillusioned with communism, though its commitment to democratic socialism and the Yiddish language seem a good fit for him ideologically. Perhaps this was because he lived in Sydney, rather than Melbourne, where the Bund’s presence was strongest,

114 Laurent Rucker, “Moscow’s Surprise: The Soviet-Israel Alliance of 1947-49,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper #46 (2005): 10; Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 114-15. 115 Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 133. Kaiser notes that the Melbourne Jewish Council’s Annual Report for 1949- 50 strikingly makes no mention of Israel at all. Mendes does argue, however, that the Melbourne Council maintained a pro-Israel stance that was at odds with the Soviet Union’s reversal after 1948 so it’s also possible that Jacob remained pro-Israel, too. Mendes, “The Cold War, McCarthyism, the Melbourne Jewish Council,” 199. 116 NAA:A6119, 6324: Field Officer Report, Jacob Horowitz, 23 February 1959. ASIO clearly did not see being anti- communist and ‘non-political’ as mutually exclusive. 117 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 118 NAA:A6119, 6324: Field Officer Report, 23 February 1959. 200

though the Bundists would also not likely have tolerated his continued connections to communists and Polish officials well.119

Horowitz’s views did not fit neatly into Cold War categories – though he gradually came to reject Soviet communism, he resisted becoming a Cold Warrior. He also seemed ambivalent toward Australia. On two occasions, when speaking with left-wing Polish friends, Jacob asserted there was ‘no future in Australia’ for Polish immigrants and that any prospective migrants should be warned as such.120 It seems his views changed on this changed, too, though. Horowitz later explained to ASIO that ‘he had difficulty in settling down for the first few years he was in Australia but had now “found his feet” and was contented.’121 He told another unhappy Pole who had just arrived in Australia the same, advising him against returning with reference to his own experience:

he did not belong to the group who wished to escape from Poland where his life was very

comfortable but left at the instigation of his wife even against his own judgment. For eight years

he regretted having come to Australia and wished to return to Poland, until he realised the fault

was within himself and he then soon became acclimatised.122

Of course, Horowitz’s descriptions of his satisfaction and life in Australia likely varied depending on the views of his interlocutor, as they do for most people. But they also speak to the ambivalence of the migrant experience for many. ASIO had little room for such nuances in their assessments, however – dissatisfaction with life in Australia, along with left-wing views, was an apparent indicator of potentially subversive disloyalty.

The other major change in Horowitz’s life was his declining health. After a severe heart attack in 1957 and with ongoing heart issues, Jacob moderated his political and social activities

119 Kaiser, “Between Nationalism,” 141-2; David Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund After 1945: Toward a Global History (London: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 157-8. A number of Melbourne’s Polish Bundists had survived the war years in the Soviet Union, too, but unlike Horowitz, emerged with a marked hatred of Soviet communism. 120 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 36082, Kuba Horowitz, 21 July 1959; Report No. 36158, Kuba Horowitz, 21 July 1959. In the first conversation, he was speaking with Zofia Zusman, a Polish woman apparently of considerable interest to ASIO in counter-espionage matters, and whose husband, Nate Zusman, worked with Horowitz in several Jewish organisations. The second call was with Zofia Szeminski, wife of the Polish Consul-General, with whom the Horowitzs became close. 121 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 122 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 37773, 11 September 1959. There is no mention in his files of having considered leaving for Israel when he was discontented – though perhaps this was due to his health. 201

somewhat.123 ASIO noted that with the health scare, ‘he is no doubt forced to go quietly. It is a point to keep in mind that he is a sick man these days.’124 He spent more time in hospital in 1959, prompting worried inquiries from friends, including those at the Polish Consulate, regarding his health.125 When Horowitz revived his application for naturalisation in 1959, the officer updating his security assessment noted that since 1955, ‘Horowitz could perhaps be regarded as a case of

“passion partly spent”, but how much of this is due to change in political sentiments and how much to health reasons in uncertain.’126

There were some officers within ASIO, particularly in B1 branch who recognised that there were several explanations for Horowitz’s altered behaviour, and they began to take the possibility of his changed beliefs seriously. One officer concluded:

Horowitz is a Jew first and foremost. It would appear that he accepted Soviet Communism in the

belief that the Soviet Union was a sanctuary for the persecuted Jews of Europe. He has now turned

against the Soviet Union because he is of the opinion that Jews are now being persecuted in

Russia.127

These officers also assessed that Jacob’s identity as an Eastern European Jew was ‘probably the main-spring of his friendship with Szeminski.’128 Horowitz and Szeminski, the Polish Consul, met at the Brezniaks’ initially and stayed in contact throughout 1958. When the Consul’s health declined late in the year, Jacob did all he could to assist. He offered ‘any assistance in his power, including financial help to assist Szeminski to return to Europe by air’ if he needed surgery, and tried to obtain an uncommon medication for him via his chemist brother-in-law.129 His efforts were in vain, but Jacob and Dora continued to support the Consul’s widow after he died in March

123 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 32348, Jacob Horowitz, 11 February 1959. 124 NAA:A6119, 6324: ADG ASIO to RD NSW, Jacob and Dora Horowitz (Naturalisation), 11 August 1959. 125 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 35789, Kuba Horowitz, 6 July 1959. 126 NAA:A6119, 6324: [Redacted] to Director B1, Jacob and Dora Horowitz (Naturalisation), 11 May 1959. 127 NAA:A6119, 6324: Field Officer Report, 23 February 1959. 128 NAA:A6119, 6324: [Redacted] to Director B1, 11 May 1959. We don’t know whether Szeminski was Jewish, and ASIO didn’t indicate whether this referred to the Polish part of Jacob’s identity or the Jewish part. 129 NAA:A6119, 6324: Copy of N.S.W. Non Gratis Secret [Redacted] “Q” 31867, 16 January 1959, Polish Consulate; Report No. 36406, Polish Consulate, 30 July 1959. 202

1959.130 When Zofia Szeminski was preparing to return to Poland, Horowitz collected funds from her local friends to purchase a knitting machine for her.131 And to ASIO’s B1 branch, it seemed entirely possible that Horowitz could have turned away from Soviet communism but maintained these associations with Polish Consular officials and his left-wing friends – one set of loyalties did not necessarily preclude the other.

B2 branch (Counter-espionage) saw things differently. Continuing to associate with the

Consulate, reading communist literature, and a close friendship with Hyam Brezniak, who B2 were quite interested in, was evidence enough that Horowitz was likely not anti-Soviet, nor anti- communist. They assessed there had been no ‘material change’ in his sentiments.132 ASIO thus decided that the time had come to interview Horowitz himself. The interview took just over an hour and the officers focused on Jacob’s background in Europe. When asked about the Russian

Social Club, Jacob described his love for the Russian language and culture, and denied seeing any political activity at the club. He explained that he liked the Russian people but not the Soviet system.133 While Jacob’s claims about the club being apolitical were perhaps a protective measure, his assessment of the Soviet Union fits with informants’ reports about his changed attitudes. When asked for his views on banning political parties, Horowitz affirmed his pro-democracy stance, explaining that:

he had lived under totalitarian systems of government and as a result believed in freedom of

association and the democratic way of life. He thought it was bad to ban any political party as it

was this way that Hitler rose to power … [and] explained: “I like freedom and I do not like

dictatorship, I can’t accept the Stalin rule, I like liberty and I like the Russian people but I do not

130 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 34684, Polish Consulate, 25 May 1959; Report No. 36095, Polish Consulate, 21 July 1959; Report No. 36158, Kuba Horowitz, 21 July 1959; Report No. 36162, Kuba Horowitz, 21 July 1959; Report No. 36444, Polish Consulate, 30 July 1959; Report No. 36994, Polish Consulate, 20 August 1959. 131 NAA:A6119, 6324: Report No. 36798, Kuba Horowitz, 17 August 1959; Report No. 36081, Kuba Horowitz, 21 July 1959. 132 NAA:A6119, 6324: RD NSW to ASIO HQ, Horowitz, Jacob and Dora (Naturalisation), 24 February 1959. B2 branch were interested in Brezniak in relation to ‘Operation Boomerang’ – they had begun surveilling him after he became close with Alan Dalziel, Evatt’s private secretary, and discovered a group of ALP figures and ex-ASIO men working to investigate ASIO and damage its credibility, see: Horner, The Spy Catchers, 463-6. 133 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 203

like the Russian system. I do not agree with the one-party system which is in operation in Russia

to-day.”134

But it would take another eight years of debate within ASIO for Horowitz to be naturalised.135

Though some of the agency’s officers assessed that Jacob had indeed become disillusioned with communism, others thought that his explanations for his reduced political activity were insufficient, deeming that his ‘changed views’ were simply a ploy, an attempt to get ASIO off his case, and arguing that he perhaps had an ulterior motive for desiring naturalisation.136 Even when

ASIO did revise its security objection, this was done reluctantly. As increasingly senior politicians made representations on the Horowitzs’ behalf, one B1 branch officer noted: ‘we will be battling to continue to withhold a clearance much longer – undesirable tho [sic.] Jacob may be.’137 By late

1967, with no new information to bolster their assessment, ASIO finally conceded, and a more than decade-long battle ended – Jacob Horowitz was naturalised in January 1968.138

In some instances, ASIO’s assessments of Jacob’s biography and political trajectory were perceptive and nuanced. ASIO’s anxiety about migrants’ lives prior to Australia meant that the security officers sometimes considered migrant subjects more holistically than other government departments, particularly Immigration, whose policy of assimilation was ‘premised on a denial of migrants’ pasts.’139 As some of ASIO’s officers noted, Jacob’s time in the Soviet Union does appear to have shaped his views regarding not only Russians, but also the Left, and Soviet communism and its potential for Jewish communities. Few who survived in the Soviet Union became Cold

134 NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 135 I am presently preparing an article titled “‘On the individual merits of the applicant’: ASIO and the Naturalisation of Left-wing Jewish Migrants” which deals with Horowitz, and others’, difficulties in becoming naturalised in detail. 136 NAA:A6119, 6324: Minute paper by [Redacted], Dr Kuba Horowitz, 18 November 1959. When Dora later re- applied for naturalisation individually, another B2 officer speculated that Jacob might have cynically had her apply ‘for tactical reasons.’ NAA:A6119, 6325: Summary of Additional Information re Jacob Horowitz for Reference to Department of Immigration. 137 NAA:A6119, 6325: ASIO Minute Paper for B1/P.S.O.(M), Jacob Horowitz, Dora Horowitz, Applicants for Naturalisation, 20 July 1965. NAA:A6119, 6334, ‘HOROWITZ, Dora Miscellaneous papers’: File Note, Dora Horowitz – Applicant for Naturalisation, 13 May 1962. 138 NAA:A6980, S201380: P.R. Heydon to Minister, 7 August 1967. Dora was actually naturalised a little earlier, in 1967 (see: NAA:A6119, 6334), but ASIO held out on Jacob’s clearance for another year. 139 Joy Damousi, “‘We Are Human Beings, and have a Past’: The ‘Adjustment’ of Migrants and the Australian Assimilation Policies of the 1950s,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, 4 (2013): 516. 204

Warriors, and retained warm feelings toward Soviet people and the debt they felt they owed to the

Soviet Union.140 It was less common for them to emerge as communist believers, as Jacob seems to have – and perhaps his involvement with the ZPP precipitated this.

Migrants’ ambivalence toward their Australian home was less comprehensible to ASIO.

Left-wing associations, combined with dissatisfaction or criticism of Australian culture and politics, triggered suspicion. ASIO noted any of Jacob’s criticisms regarding Australia with interest, adding to their characterisation of him as a radical left-wing believer. Some ASIO officers, particularly officers of B1 branch, wrote perceptively about the shifts in Jacob’s politics and changing attitude to Soviet communism. They noted the overlapping identities of Eastern

European, left-leaning Jews, and that events in the Soviet Union during 1950s brought these identities into conflict. What ASIO struggled to make sense of, however, was how this ‘broken- hearted communist’ did not become a Cold Warrior, continued his relationships with left-wing friends, and built new associations with Communist officials of the Polish Consulate. In these migrants’ multiple, overlapping loyalties ASIO saw something duplicitous and any declared changes of belief likely fronts. As one ex-ASIO officer remembered his fellow officers remarking when he objected to these rejections of naturalisation on political grounds: ‘You can’t trust ‘em, they’re coms.’141

ASIO had a low tolerance for the ambivalences and contradictions of actual people’s politics. In the case of left-wing, Eastern European migrants, and perhaps especially Jews, these ambivalences could be particularly pronounced and often resulted in an adverse security record.

ASIO’s variable judgements about migrants’ status show that Cold War anti-communism was applied unevenly, but frequently caused issues for those who contravened categories of

‘communist’ or ‘anti-communist.’ Nevertheless, such people persisted. Horowitz did alter his associations somewhat, in the wake of the Petrov Affair, but did not jettison his work with the

140 Edele & Warlik, “Saved by Stalin?,” 123; Goldlust, “A Different Silence,” 69. 141 McKnight, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, 142. 205

Sydney Council, nor did he avoid friends like the Brezniaks or the Polish officials. Jacob and Dora altered their biographies where necessary to increase their chances of naturalisation. They contacted local politicians whom they knew and worked their friends’ Labor Party connections to enlist the support of high-level politicians, contributing to the pressure which forced ASIO’s hand and eventually secured their naturalisation.

206

Chapter Eight Spies & Informants

Around 1958, Lydia Mokras recalled picking up her ringing telephone to an unfamiliar, male voice.

The caller introduced himself as Charles Spry. Mokras was in her late thirties by this time, had reverted back to her maiden name, Janovska, and was by all accounts beautiful, charming, and enigmatic.1 She had also become increasingly close with Alan Dalziel, Evatt’s private secretary and perpetual thorn in ASIO’s side.2 Spry wanted to visit Lydia at her apartment and when she assented, he arrived with liquor and oysters. They would meet about three times in total, speaking openly about life and family.3 Eventually, Spry laid his cards on the table and asked if ASIO might plant a bug in her apartment. She agreed – perhaps due to her new-found rapport with ASIO’s director, or maybe she felt she had little choice.

This is how Lydia told the story to Peter Butt, a documentary film-maker, in 2009. Butt was working on the production of a film titled I, Spry about ASIO’s early years and its most infamous director. He had secured an interview with Mokras after a few months of negotiations and the scene she described became a central moment in Butt’s film, reproduced verbatim from her narrative of events.4 The story’s veracity is questionable. Mokras was known in her younger days to tell fantastic tales about her involvement with spies.5 ASIO were never quite sure what to make of this mysterious Russian woman and nor were Soviet intelligence, by Petrov’s account.6

1 NAA:A6119, 6324, ‘HOROWITZ, Jacob (aka Kuba) Volume 1’: Report No. 38324, Kuba Horowitz, 27 October 1959; NAA:A6119, 6325, ‘HOROWITZ, Jacob (aka Kuba) Volume 2’: Report No. 38669, Kuba Horowitz, 12 November 1959; David McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 102. 2 David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO, 1949-1963, Volume I (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), 464. 3 Peter Butt, “ABC film looks at Petrov Affair,” interview by Mark Colvin, ABC PM, 2 November 2010, transcript, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3055295.htm. 4 Personal communication from Peter Butt to the author, Sydney, 9 October 2020. 5 She even admitted to ASIO that much of what she had told Bialoguski about her connections to espionage was false. NAA:A6119, 192, ‘JANOVSKI, Lidia Mokras [Lidia Mokras, nee Janovski]’: Interview with Lidia MOKRAS at 12 Lord Street, Roseville, between 12 noon – 4.15pm on Monday, 4 July, 1955; NAA:A6119, 4717, ‘Mokras, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 4’: S.O. Aliens to O.I.C. Aliens, Assessments: Jyotikana Ray, 10 July 1968. 6 Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair: Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1987), 12-3. 207

Further, Mokras’ account remains almost impossible to confirm. If Spry did visit her alone, as she said, the Director was not exactly following protocol, so is hardly likely to have submitted a report on the interaction.

Regardless of the accuracy of its retelling, Mokras’ memory of the Spry meeting is illustrative of the varied interactions that occurred between postwar migrants and ASIO’s officers.

This chapter traces the processes and consequences of ASIO’s incursions into left-wing migrant communities, focusing on the way that migrants responded to their interactions with intelligence.

Some of these interactions were conscious relationships, as in the case of migrants who reported information to ASIO or agreed to become ongoing informants. Other interactions were less direct.

Some migrants may have suspected that the well-mannered ‘government’ people who interviewed them when applying for naturalisation were police or security officers, but they seldom had the full story. When migrants came within ASIO’s orbit, their telephone conversations would be intercepted, their words reported back to ASIO handlers by agents, and their meetings recorded by listening devices planted in rooms. They could step off a tram with a field officer a few metres behind them, or be photographed leaving a foreign consulate or standing on a street corner. This information was translated, typed, photocopied, and assembled into an ever-growing version of their life which resided in ASIO’s filing cabinets.

Yet in some cases, migrants believed they were under far greater surveillance than they actually were, perceiving intelligence officers around every corner despite ASIO’s resources often already being stretched to the limits. They usually knew less about ASIO than it did about them, and this imbalance shaped their interactions with the organisation and its officers. The history of

ASIO’s incursion into left-wing migrant communities is therefore a history of both real and imagined encounters. As with Lydia’s ambiguous connections to Spry, ASIO became a presence both in the lives and in the minds of left-wing migrants.

208

Breaking down ASIO: B1, B2 & C Branch

Though its shadowy nature has probably contributed to such characterisations, ASIO during the

Cold War was no monolith. It was made up of officers, branches, and sections with overlapping, but subtly different, mandates. As was evident in cases like Jacob Horowitz’s, this meant that

ASIO’s officers assessed and interacted with left-wing migrants in slightly different ways, depending on their brief. The organisation was restructured and expanded under Spry, but its basic structure of three main branches – B1, B2, and C – was modelled on MI5.7 Depending on their particular associations and activities, émigrés often interacted with one or more branches at different points of the migration and resettlement processes. Migrants under surveillance also often unknowingly interacted with Q Section, which managed both agent running and technical operations like listening devices, photography, and telephone interception.8

Most postwar migrants who came to ASIO’s notice for political activity were handled by

B1 branch, whose mandate was counter-subversion. Subversive activity was always vaguely defined, but from ASIO’s early days was understood as actions ‘directed against the authority of the state with the ultimate intention of overthrowing the system of government,’ including

‘espionage, sabotage, and agitation and propaganda.’9 During the Cold War, B1 focused almost solely on the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and its activists, who ASIO believed would carry out Soviet-directed subversion. But B1’s operations expanded outward from there, encompassing trade unions and so-called ‘communist front’ organisations where the CPA was thought to be infiltrating and organising covertly. ASIO considered most of the left-wing organisations with which migrants associated – like the Russian Social Club, the Australia-Russia

Society, the Jewish Councils to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, and the Peace Councils – to

7 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 149-50. 8 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 162. Q Section was established by Spry in April 1951 to improve ASIO’s ability to penetrate the Communist Party – as such, the section fell under the purview of B1 branch’s Assistant Director until it became a separate branch in the aftermath of the Royal Commission on Espionage. 9 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 117. 209

be communist ‘fronts.’10 B1 branch also played a key role in assembling the lists of migrants who would be interned in the event of war (the Special Index of Aliens) at Spry’s request in 1950.

B1’s primary occupation was in collecting enough information to adequately monitor and assess the threat posed by potential ‘subversives,’ with an entire sub-section focused on communist activity among migrants.11 Of the nine B1 field officers in ASIO’s NSW office during the early

1950s, three worked on migrant subversion.12 In July 1951, ASIO estimated that around 2,000

‘enemy aliens’ would need to be considered for internment in the event of war, but at the time, the organisation had files on only 300 such ‘aliens.’13 Consequently, B1 branch’s main focus when it came to left-wing migrants was information gathering; these files had to be built in order to determine whether individuals’ activities warranted internment, or just monitoring.14 But with time, compiling files went beyond the issue of internment and information was often gathered for its own sake, with little analysis or reflection on its importance.15 B1 was primarily in the business of proving that their subjects were connected to the CPA and thus, interested in subverting Australia’s interests.

10 As discussed in Chapter One, the Russian Social Club had some connections to the CPA but was not directed or controlled by the Party. Nor were the Jewish Councils straightforward ‘fronts,’ see Chapter Seven. The CPA was ‘the early driving force behind’ the Australian Peace Council, however, see Phillip Deery, “War on Peace: Menzies, the Cold War and the 1953 Convention on Peace and War,” Australian Historical Studies 34, 122 (2003): 264-5. Horner says that the Australia-Russia Society, too, was established with CPA assistance, see The Spy Catchers, 199. 11 McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets, 110. 12 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 207. Their duties were similar but slightly specialised. All made inquiries about migrants’ subversive activities, but Field Officer G also looked after the Special Index of Aliens and researched ‘Russian and satellite countries, including Chinese.’ Field Officer H researched ‘Yugoslavian, Greek, Albanian, Cypriot and Middle Eastern communities.’ And Field Officer I made inquiries about the Jewish community, while researching ‘European countries.’ 13 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 193. ASIO’s formal definition of ‘enemy aliens’ were migrants from the Soviet Union (including Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania), Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, China, North Korea, and areas of French Indochina (Vietnam) who had left their homelands after 1 January 1946 and those with passports dated after the beginning of 1948. Officials of migrant clubs which supported the policies of these ‘enemy’ countries (such as the Russian Social Club) were also to be interned. See: McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets, 118. 14 Attorney-General John Spicer was concerned by Spry’s initial ‘blanket approach’ to internment of enemy aliens, asking him “What of the man who retains a love of his country and does not wish to be naturalised but who is unsympathetic to communism?” Spicer requested that ASIO assess every case individually and assemble evidence for the necessity of internment, which drastically increased ASIO’s workload and B1’s intelligence gathering brief regarding migrants. McKnight, Australia’s Spies and their Secrets, 119-20. 15 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 204; Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled: Security Surveillance of Australian Authors and Intellectuals, 1920- 1960 (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1993), 5. 210

There was significant overlap between the branches’ mandates. If B1 branch found that an individual was potentially involved in espionage (the example David Horner gives is telling:

‘such as being seen with a Russian’) the case would be transferred to the counter-espionage branch,

B2.16 So while membership of the Russian Social Club would make a migrant B1’s responsibility, if she or he began regularly socialising there with Nosov, Pakhomov, or some other Soviet official, their case might become a matter for B2. In ASIO’s earliest years, B2 branch’s resources were focused almost entirely on The Case – the organisation’s raison d’être. In investigating the source of leaks from the Department of External Affairs, B2’s main target was a Soviet they called ‘the Bag’:

Feodor Nosov, the TASS man.

It was primarily B2’s surveillance of the Nosovs which brought migrants to the branch’s attention. For almost a year, Nosov was followed, his mail opened, and his flat and telephone bugged, so the TASS man’s interactions with migrants were noted, recorded, and filed daily.17 This continued when Pakhomov took over the position and the flat from Nosov, and into Antonov’s tenure as TASS representative.18 As Natasha Stashevska went to the Post Office with the Nosovs to cable her parents in Shanghai, and Boris Binetsky visited Pakhomov with a thank-you note from the Social Club, B2’s officers were watching and recording.19

During the five-year period that the Soviet Embassy was closed, from 1954-1959, B2 shifted their focus to other possible channels of Soviet espionage. They began searching for a network of Soviet illegal agents (those without diplomatic cover), based on information from

16 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 202. 17 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 129; 132. 18 NAA:A6119, 1735, ‘PAKHOMOV, Ivan – Volume 4’: V. Petrov Statement, Margaret KENT-HUGHES, 9 December 1954; NAA:A6119, 1735: V. Petrov Statement, Margaret KENT-HUGHES, 10 December 1954; Horner, The Spy Catchers, 284. There was an eighteen month gap during 1951-2 when Pakhomov (or perhaps Pakhomova) noticed the hole in the ceiling and confronted a female ex-ASIO officer who lived in the flat above with her husband (also an ASIO officer) as part of the surveillance operation on the Kings Cross flat. The technical operation was suspended but resumed in April 1953 after Dalziel was seen visiting Antonov at the flat. 19 NAA:A6126, 1413, ‘STASHEVSKY, Natalia’: “GROUT” Report, 20 January 1950; NAA:A6126, 1414, ‘BINETSKY, Boris Nicholas’: RD NSW to ASIO HQ, 22 July 1952. 211

Petrov.20 This was a difficult task, as illegal operatives typically had little, if any, contact with the legal operatives at the Embassy. They would have been recruited overseas, so B2 looked for suspects who had spent time in the Soviet Union and particularly, at migrants of Soviet origin.21

B2 branch also mounted more intensive surveillance of other Eastern Bloc diplomatic staff, particularly the Czech, Polish, and Yugoslav Consulates-General. These consulates had little contact with Russian migrants, who typically communicated with the Soviet Embassy in New

Zealand during this period, but ASIO’s surveillance picked up their officials’ many interactions with other European migrants, such as Jerzy Bielski, Jacob Horowitz, and Hyam Brezniak’s visits to the Polish Consulate. B2 were looking for indications of espionage by their migrant subjects: clandestine meetings, connections to communist officials, and the passing of information and documents (all things a migrant could also be doing without being a spy).

But as the 1950s wore on, migrants interacted increasingly with C branch as they applied for naturalisation. C branch handled ‘protective security,’ which usually meant vetting. Though perhaps less glamorous than counter-espionage or agent running, vetting took up a large portion of ASIO’s time and resources.22 C branch was responsible for approving security clearances, vetting public servants, and screening prospective migrants and all applicants for naturalisation, so its officers spent hours checking back-stories, qualifications, and references.23 The European DPs were not typically screened by ASIO before their arrival – this was carried out by the IRO (with advice from British and American intelligence) and Australian migration officials.24 Russians

20 Petrov had been instructed to set up a network of illegals in Australia but told ASIO that he had not done so. ASIO also knew, though, that there had been GRU officers in Australia, such as Gordeev and Pavlov, who could conceivably have created a GRU illegal network, about which Petrov would have had no knowledge. See: Horner, The Spy Catchers, 453-4. 21 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 454. 22 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 233-4. C branch also advised various government departments on security practices, like building security and document handling. 23 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 234. 24 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 253-4; 258. ASIO did have screening officers in Europe from May 1951, but most DPs had already arrived or were on their way to Australia by this point. 212

arriving via China, too, were usually screened by Australian migration or consular officials rather than ASIO, though MI5 sometimes provided advice if the subject travelled via Hong Kong.25

ASIO’s first major screening of postwar migrants occurred, then, when they applied for naturalisation. The Department of Immigration forwarded each application to ASIO for advice, and C branch would begin constructing an assessment. They conducted checks with overseas security services, particularly MI5, then Australia’s immigration records and in most cases, interviewed the applicant and sometimes also their referees.26 These interviews could be an intelligence gold mine in the case of applicants who had previously been ‘adversely recorded’ by

B1 or B2. They provided an opportunity to gain information from the subject without alerting them to ASIO’s attention, under the guise of their naturalisation.

In the interview, a migrant had the opportunity to converse directly with security and thus, it is often the moment where their voice appears most directly in the file. Some interview subjects, like Jerzy Bielski, were informed that their interlocutors were ASIO officers. Others were not, but likely suspected as much.27 One Russian Social Club personality was interviewed when he sponsored his sister’s migration from the Soviet Union and later told a friend (on a tapped phone line) that ‘he knew they were just using the sponsorship as a pretext to ask him about things but

… he played dumb.’28 And even if they were unaware, migrants were trying to secure something from the state and acted accordingly. They emphasised certain details, left others out, and

25 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 269. 26 Spry was never impressed with the screening carried out by the IRO and migration officials and thus sought time- consuming overseas checks, in order to catch any illegals inserted among the DPs by Soviet intelligence. Overseas checks were gradually scaled back, as the Minister, Holt, grew concerned with the delays they caused and took the matter to Menzies. Horner, The Spy Catchers, 270-1. 27 NAA:A6119, 5105, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 1’: Brief for Interview – Jerzy Bielski, March 1956; NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Jacob and Dora Horowitz (Naturalisation), 13 October 1959; NAA:A6126, 1414: Report on Interview with Boris Nicholaevich BINETSKY, 28 March 1955; NAA:A6126, 1414: Notes on Interview with George Nicholas BINETSKY, 29 March 1955. Jacob Horowitz, for example, when asked if he was satisfied with how the interview was conducted remarked ‘that in similar circumstances in Russia or Poland he would have been ordered to present himself at the office and there would have been no certainty that he would have returned to his home,’ so one imagines he assumed that these were security officers. NAA:A6119, 6324: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, 13 October 1959. 28 NAA:A6119, 7043, ‘DUKIN Alexander Volume 1’: Report No. 3860/66, Nikolai Oleksyn, 8 November 1966. 213

sometimes just lied, where they assessed that it would be advantageous to their application. Lydia

Hitrova lied about her membership of the Russian Social Club, and Jacob and Dora Horowitz omitted their wartime residence in the Soviet Union from their biographies.29 It was usually with

C branch that migrants had their only opportunity to add their version of events to the record.

Horner states in the Official History that the ultimate authority for granting or withholding naturalisation lay with the Minister for Immigration but accepts that where ASIO advised against clearance, the Department did not typically countermand them.30 There were some notable exceptions to this, like Severyn Pejsachowicz, whose naturalisation was approved due to ministerial intervention, but in general the Department followed ASIO’s lead.31 Horner also notes that the numbers of migrants denied naturalisation on security grounds in the mid-1950s were low.32 While true, this does not acknowledge the protracted, hard-fought battles of many migrants, like the

Horowitz family, in getting there.33

The Process of Surveillance

On a rainy Friday night in 1968, the B2 officers tailing Vladimir Alekseev, the Soviet Embassy’s

Third Secretary, followed him to 106 Duffy Street, in the Canberra suburb of Ainslie.34 One of the officers recognised this as Sasha Dukin’s residence. The Alekseevs stayed for about an hour and a half, during which another car pulled into the drive, but the rain had become so heavy that its numberplate was unreadable. The surveillance team surely felt they had drawn the short straw that night, sitting in the pouring rain in their car by the park across from the Dukins’, dutifully recording

29 NAA:A6119, 7042, ‘HITROVA, Lydia Stepanova Volume 1’: Senior Field Officer Interview Report, Lydia HITROVA, 27 February 1961; Report No. 282/62, Russian Social Club, 11 July 1962. 30 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 270. 31 Kristina Kukolja & Lindsey Arkley with John Zubrzycki & Nathan Kopp, “Unwanted Australians,” SBS News Online, accessed 5 October 2020: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/feature/unwanted-australians. 32 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 271. 33 As discussed in Chapter Seven, other scholars have also noted cases of Greek migrants’ battles to become naturalised, see: Phillip Deery, “ ‘Dear Mr Brown’: Migrants, Security and the Cold War,” History Australia 2, 2 (2005): 40-1–40-12; McKnight, Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets, 141. 34 NAA:A6119, 7043: ASIO Minute Paper by O.B.E., Alekseev, Vladimir Alexandrovich, 13 August 1968. 214

these details. And the intelligence dividend on such operations was negligible. At the end of this hours-long operation, B2 branch now knew that the Alekseevs had visited the Dukins, a fact already well-established by phone interception, and that another unknown person had dropped in for a minute or two.

Such was the lot of ASIO’s field officers who worked on surveillance details. Sometimes tailing a suspect would produce an intelligence coup – indeed, it was how the Canberra office got their first lead that Alekseev was the KGB rezident in Australia.35 But most of time, it involved dreary, uncomfortable evenings which produced banal reports of little intelligence value. The resources available for photographic surveillance were finite and in its absence field officers often struggled to describe unknown subjects such that they could be identified by other officers, rendering the intelligence far less useful. When seen out and about with the Nosovs, twenty-one- year-old Natalia Stashevska appears to have been described (rather unfairly, it would seem) as thirty-five and forty years old, until an enterprising officer obtained a more recent photograph of her and assessed ‘she is now wearing her hair upswept and looks considerably older.’36 This kind of surveillance also exemplifies the more traditional relationship between intelligence officer and subject: the watcher and the watched. Usually, the idea was that the subject should remain ignorant of the officer’s presence, and thus conscious interaction between the two parties was minimised.

Even so, the Alekseevs likely knew that they were usually tailed and perhaps the Dukins had some awareness of the shadowy figures who lurked in the park opposite their house.

There were other, often more effective, ways to keep tabs on a subject’s activities in any case. Postal inspection, for one, was far less labour-intensive for ASIO. When customs officials identified particular Soviet and Eastern Bloc publications addressed to individuals in Australia,

35 John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963-1975, Volume II (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), 204-5. 36 NAA:A6126, 1413: “GROUT” Report, 20 January 1950; Feodor and Galina Nosov – Surveillance, 4 June 1950; Report for Director Sydney, Natalia Mihailovna Stashevsky, 26 January 1950. 215

they would alert ASIO so that its officers could take a look prior to delivery.37 Juris Pintans seems to have come to ASIO’s attention via this route. As discussed in Chapter Four, he began corresponding with the ‘Return to the Homeland’ Committee in East Berlin and requested that their journal be sent to his migrant neighbours, to correct their anti-communist opinions.38 ASIO officers do not appear to have kept tabs on all of the migrants Juris attempted to educate, but some certainly had reports placed on their files for receiving such publications which were noted when they applied for naturalisation.39

A far more productive source was technical surveillance. ASIO dabbled in technology when it was established in 1948 but it was the formation of Q Section (later called Special Services

Branch) in 1951 which saw the agency develop sophisticated operations.40 Listening devices were used from ASIO’s earliest days; the first such operation was the device installed in the ceiling of the Kings Cross flat occupied by the TASS representatives, which produced an amount of intelligence regarding migrants.41 This was known as Operation Smile and intelligence gleaned from the bug was probably attributed to a source code-named ‘Grin.’42 A number of migrants visited the TASS representatives while ASIO was listening in, but one did not need to even attend the flat personally to be caught up in its surveillance. ASIO gained information on Natalia

37 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 235. 38 NAA:A6119, 7049, ‘PINTANS, Juris Peteris Volume 1’: Communications Submission, Return to the Homeland Correspondence, 18 January 1958. 39 NAA:A6119, 7049: Memo for RD NSW, Juris and Martha PINTANS – Repatriation, 8 April 1958; NAA:A6119, 7049: Memo for ASIO HQ, Mytka, Petro and Freida Hedwig, Applicants for Naturalisation, 5 June 1959. When ASIO assessed one Nikolai Desmond (formerly Koudriavsoff), the Melbourne-born son of interwar Russian émigrés, for entrance into the military, one piece of evidence raised against his security clearance was that his father had received ‘Communist propaganda material by mail,’ which a particularly astute B1 officer assessed were illustrated magazines depicting the Soviet Union, akin to an Englishman ordering the Illustrated London News out of nostalgia. NAA:A6126, 1413: RD NSW to DG, Dimitry Ross Desmond, 29 February 1952; NAA:A6126, 1413: PSO B1 Assessment, Nicholas DESMOND, Dmitri Ross Desmond, undated. 40 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 162. 41 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 216. 42 Horner confirms that bugging the Nosov’s flat was referred to as Operation Smile and ASIO often employed related code-names on operations – e.g. Operation Medico referred to the bugging of a CPA building, where the microphone was called ‘scalpel’, the recording equipment ‘X-Ray equipment,’ individuals in the rooms ‘patients,’ etc. (see Horner, The Spy Catchers, 222). 216

Figure 8.1: ASIO Photographic Surveillance of Lydia Mokras’ Wedding, 1961 (Augusta Klodnitskaya is second from left; Mokras, centre in fur coat) Source: NAA:A9626, 783

Stashevska and her family in China after Galina Nosova and Anna Pakhomova discussed the young woman in the bugged flat.43 The operation was not always so effective, however. The conversations were usually in Russian and early on, ASIO had few Russian translators. Further, the Nosovs were careful. Often, they would put the radio on to drown out their conversations, though ASIO assessed that they were well-trained rather than aware of the device.44 Special

Services also attempted to plant a listening device in the Soviet Embassy prior to its return in 1959,

43 NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natalia Stashevsky, 18 July 1950. The audio quality was clearly variable and would result in reports like this, regarding Stashevska’s mother: ‘She also said “her mother is working there in the Soviet (sounded like office).”’ NAA:A6126, 1413: R. Gamble Report, Natasha Stashevsky, 16 June 1950. 44 NAA:A6119, 1246/REFERENCE COPY, ‘NOSOV, Feodor Andreevich – Volume 3 [contains 102 folios]’: Operation [Redacted], undated; Frank Cain, Terrorism & Intelligence in Australia: a History of ASIO & National Surveillance (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008), 101. 217

which might have produced significant intelligence regarding its migrant visitors (and drinking comrades, like Sasha Dukin), had the bug not proved a failure.45

Telephone interceptions were the more reliable and widely used form of technical surveillance, however. Chifley had agreed to allow the legally questionable interceptions in 1949 and by July 1950, fourteen different taps, all in Sydney, were operating.46 Knowledge of interceptions was kept very compartmentalised, especially in these early years – only a handful of officers and trusted individuals at the Postmaster-General’s Department were aware of the operations at all, and intelligence from the taps was attributed to fictitious ‘agents’ as an extra security measure.47 Horner names the targets of the four initial interceptions, but it is not clear who else was targeted. The phone in the TASS flat was surely tapped, and it appears that either the Russian Social Club’s phone, or that of its president Augusta Klodnitskaya, was subject to interception. Reports based on Sydney phone taps were attributed to the imaginary agent ‘Bob

Kelly’ and Kelly’s reports on Klodnitskaya’s conversations litter ASIO’s files.48 With ASIO’s growing technical capabilities and Spry’s leadership, interception operations expanded significantly during the early 1950s, and by 1954 there were fifty interceptions being conducted in Sydney alone.49

45 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 532-3. ASIO were never sure whether the bug failed to work because the Soviets knew about, or discovered, the device, if it had been damaged, or if the trees had grown up and blocked the signal. 46 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 130. Of the initial four taps, one targeted a migrant: Mark Younger, formerly Marek Junker, Polish-born and naturalised after arriving in Australia in 1926, who was close with Nosov, see: NAA:A6119, 351, ‘YOUNGER, Mark (Marek JUNKER) Volume 1’. 47 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 130-1; 215. 48 See, for example: NAA:A6122, 2799, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 1’: ‘Bob Kelly’ Report, Screening of the Soviet Films at the residence of Mr & Mrs Klodnitsky, 11 December 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: ‘Bob Kelly’ Report, Activities of Members of the Russian Social Club, 19 December 1950; NAA:A6122, 2799: ‘Bob Kelly’ Report, 14 April 1951; NAA:A6119, 6971, ‘KLODNITSKY CLAUDE, Tanya Augusta (aka KLODNISKY aka KLODNITSKII aka KLODNITSKY-CLAUDE) Volume 1’: ‘Bob Kelly’ Report, S.S.O. B2 to PSO B2, 30 November 1950. Valdemar Wake (son of Bob Wake, a former ASIO officer who fell out with the organisation) claims in his book, an attempt to rehabilitate his father’s reputation, that the Klodnitskys’ phone was tapped during the late 1950s (see: Valdemar Robert Wake, No Ribbons or Medals: the story of “Hereward”, an Australian counter espionage officer (Sydney: Jacobyte Books, 2004), 306) and ASIO’s own records show that it was tapped during the mid-1960s (see: NAA:A6119, 6972, ‘KLODNITSKY CLAUDE, Tanya Augusta (aka KLODNISKY aka KLODNITSKII aka KLODNITSKY-CLAUDE) Volume 2’). 49 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 165. Spry approved every interception operation personally. Between 1950 and 1954, 16 phones were intercepted in Canberra. Interceptions began later in Melbourne, from September 1951, but 23 phones were being monitored by 1954. 218

Though they could intercept telephone lines and listen in, during the early 1950s ASIO’s capacity to record and report on these conversations was limited. The Sydney office initially only had a three-line board with no recording device – though they monitored more phone lines than this, they could listen to only three simultaneously.50 This was gradually upgraded to five lines and a recording device, but conversations conducted in any language that wasn’t English still posed an issue. Bill Marshall (formerly Vladimir Mishchenko), a China Russian émigré, was recruited in 1950 to work full-time translating Nosov’s conversations.51 Marshall would go on to a long career with

ASIO, and played a role in the Petrov defection, acting as a translator at the Petrov safe house.52

ASIO were still short on Russian speakers, however, and the Canberra office initially recruited a translator from the Department of Immigration to work on their interceptions of the Soviet

Embassy’s phones.53

ASIO’s interception capabilities improved significantly during the latter half of the 1950s and by 1960, the level of secrecy seems to have dropped. The fictitious agents had disappeared and the intelligence produced was labelled as such, simply: ‘Intercept Report.’54 By the time ASIO’s

Canberra Office was intercepting Sasha Dukin’s phone in the late 1960s, they had two Russian translators on staff – though one, George Sadil, would later be suspected of spying for the

Soviets.55 John Blaxland argues that Sadil’s involvement in translating intercepts relating to the

Lysenko Case (discussed in Chapter Five) ‘adds another degree of complexity to understanding

50 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 130. 51 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 132; Paul Dibb, Inside the Wilderness of Mirrors: Australia and the Threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War and Russia Today (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2018), 13. Marshall’s son Donald, born in China, would go on to work counter-espionage with ASIO in Canberra from the 1970s to 1991. 52 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 340. 53 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 286. 54 This was likely a result of the newly established Telephone Communications (Interception) Act of 1960, which formalised and regulated the telephone interception process, requiring a warrant signed by ASIO’s Director-General and the Attorney-General. Blaxland notes that interception operations were still covered by the codeword ‘Hawke’ and later ‘Bugle’ to maintain their secrecy within ASIO but does not mention the transition to reports labelled explicitly as intercepts. See: Blaxland, The Protest Years, 82-3. 55 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 225. Sadil was arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in 1993 on suspicion of espionage, after conducting a mole hunt based overseas information that the KGB had penetrated ASIO. The AFP found classified documents in Sadil’s home, for which he was convicted, but had no firm evidence that he had passed documents to foreign intelligence so he was never charged with espionage. See: John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley, The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO, 1975-1989, Volume III (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2016), 420-1. 219

how events unfolded,’ and the same is probably true of the Dukin intercepts.56 The shortage of translators meant that Sadil and his colleague were asked to listen to hours of conversations but report only on those of ‘operational importance,’ and were thus making analytical decisions about what to include.57 Typically, the intercept reports lodged in an individual’s ASIO file did not include verbatim transcripts of conversations but summaries of the relevant information.

Occasionally, verbatim excerpts (sometimes lengthy ones, if the incident was interesting) were included, but never in the original Russian.

These reports often bring the reader much closer to the subject, as some of the individual’s own words are present. But these words were mediated by the translator’s decisions regarding relevant content, plus their assessment of the language used and the conversation’s general tone.

Canberra’s translators chose, for example, to report some intercepted conversations regarding a fight which had occurred at Lina and Sasha Dukin’s wedding celebration. The report noted that the newlyweds ‘discussed the wedding fight … [Lina] said that she cannot go out because of her eyes (black eyes probably) and blamed it on the effects of Vodka. Dukin, like a take dog, didn’t know what to say.’58 The case officer’s comment which closed out the report attempted to clarify:

From what the translators understand the fight was between Josef and Lida Asciukiewicz … They

apparently make a habit of it when they drink too much. The reference to black eyes … is probably

a misunderstanding of some ambiguous phrase used by Dukina.

The translator(s) here made interpretive leaps regarding Dukin’s silence (he ‘didn’t know what to say’) and the unfamiliar expression which Lina used regarding her eyes. In the context of this

‘wedding fight,’ the translator appears to have inferred that it was ‘black eyes,’ though it seems just

56 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 225. 57 Blaxland, The Protest Years, 22. Blaxland notes that in the case of Czech language material in Sydney, six of 94 conversations were deemed significant and translated during 1963, and proportionately the same amount of Russian and Polish intercepts, though presumably the numbers themselves were higher. 58 NAA:A6119, 7045, ‘DUKIN, Alexander Volume 3’: Intercept Report, Dukins Wedding, 21 and 22 January 1971. There’s no comment included on the translator’s odd description of Dukin as a ‘take dog’ – perhaps this was supposed to read ‘tame dog’? 220

as likely that Dukina was referring to her own hangover. Further, the operational significance of the wedding incident is not immediately apparent. Despite their instructions to ignore ‘domestic chit chat,’ translators often reported incidents of a personal and seemingly banal nature, resulting in a much more colourful surveillance record than might be expected. The subjects themselves were mediating these intercept reports to an extent, too. Where they were aware of or suspected eavesdroppers on the line, subjects would alter what information they shared, with whom, and how they conveyed it. The Dukins were aware of the tap on their phone (see Chapter Five), and

Russian Social Club personnel like Klodnitskaya also appear to have suspected interception and moderated their conversations accordingly (see Chapter One).

The bulk of ASIO’s intelligence, however, came from informants. In some cases, these were unsolicited ‘tips’ or reports from the general public. Under Spry, ASIO sought to pull back the veil somewhat, as the Director deemed that their anonymity made collecting information more difficult.59 A few ASIO phone numbers were published in capital cities’ telephone directories so that the public could make contact to report information or ‘threats,’ and some did. More often though, it seems that reports were made to more accessible authorities, like local police or members of parliament, and passed on to ASIO by way of Special Branch or the Commonwealth

Investigation Service (CIS).60 Migrants were certainly involved in this and were known to

‘denounce’ members of their own communities and others. Many Poles reported on Jerzy Bielski, and the Jewish Councils to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism made regular reports regarding antisemitic incidents, particularly among migrants.61 But equally, Australians were willing to inform

59 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 187. 60 In Jerzy Bielski’s case, for example, one woman rang ASIO directly to report information she had heard about him from a friend (NAA:A6119, 5105: Report from S.F.O. B1, Georgius Bielski – Alleged Communist, 4 July 1955), while Eileen Furley, Chairwoman of the NSW Liberal Party’s Migrant Advisory Committee, was contacted by members of the Polish community and she passed their information on Bielski to the Department of Immigration (NAA:A6119, 5106, ‘BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 2’: Eileen Furley to P.R. Heydon, 17 May 1963), and John Carrick, Secretary of the NSW Liberal Party, passed information on Bielski obtained from Richard Krygier, a Polish migrant and prominent anti-communist figure, to the Immigration Minister (NAA:A6119, 5105: J.L. Carrick to Howard Beale, Acting Minister for Immigration, 26 August 1952). 61 NAA:A6119, 5105: ASIO Assessment Form, Application for Naturalisation, Jerzy Bielski; NAA:A6980, S250256, ‘Jewish Council to combat fascism’: Ernest Platz to H.E. Holt, 4 May 1956; NAA:A6122, 1883, ‘Jewish Council to 221

on their neighbours too. When ASIO made inquiries among their union contacts about Jerzy

Bielski, for example, few knew him personally but were happy to pass on all of the rumours they had heard about him.62

ASIO’s more regular informants could be divided roughly into two categories – contacts and agents. Contacts were a less formal liaison and not usually paid. These people kept their ears open for information and passed it on to ASIO from time to time. Agents, however, were directed to collect specific types of information or associate with particular communities, and were typically remunerated for out-of-pocket expenses and sometimes a small retainer.63 In its first year, ASIO registered around thirty agents (though it lost many of these due to poor security), and with the establishment of Q Section in 1951, the organisation significantly increased its agent-running capacity.64

Initially, agents were referred to by cryptonyms – their names were among ASIO’s most sensitive pieces of information and were closely controlled even within the organisation. The code-names which appear most frequently in ASIO’s files on left-wing migrants are J. Baker and

Philip Crane, both of which referred to Michael Bialoguski, as discussed in detail below. There were others, but most of their identities remain unknown. To this day, ASIO has acknowledged the identities of only a handful of agents. Apart from Baker/Crane, an agent known as J. Richmond also reported on the Russian Social Club. Richmond attended a few events and for at least one of these, Bialoguski was also present (though presumably, neither knew about the other).65 Richmond was likely a DP, reporting once on a Ukrainian whom he or she recalled from Bathurst Migrant

Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism – ASIO File – Volume 7 [166pp]’: Joseph Redapple to Commonwealth Investigation Branch, 9 October 1951. 62 NAA:A6119, 5105: H.C. Wright, RD NSW, to ASIO HQ, Jerzy (George Stefan) Bielski, 10 January 1956. 63 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 208. 64 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 162. Horner doesn’t indicate how these agents were ‘lost’ precisely – whether their identities were compromised or if they left due to fear of being compromised. 65 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club, 18 September 1950; J. Richmond Report, Russian Social Club, 15 September 1950. Richmond and Baker both gave lists of individuals they noticed in attendance, the only name common to both lists being Smirnoff, who often hosted the club’s Saturday night dances. 222

Camp.66 On one occasion, an agent recorded as ‘Catherine McDonald’ attended the Club and provided a report to her case officer. McDonald, like Baker/Crane, had her cover blown by the hearings of the Royal Commission on Espionage.67 She was Mercia Masson, a journalist, who had infiltrated a number of communist ‘front’ groups. Her case officer was pleased with her report on the visit to the Club, as she had successfully identified and gathered information on Nosov, and other counter-espionage targets.68 Masson was directed to focus primarily on Rex Chiplin, the communist journalist, however, and the émigré organisations remained Bialoguski’s domain. In the reports produced during these initial years of cryptonyms, though it is not generally possible to identify agents whose identities ASIO has not itself revealed, one does build up some picture of the agent. With a relatively high volume of reporting, there are indications of which people the agent often associated with, in which circles they moved, and which types of events they frequented – like the cultural evenings and lectures typical of the ‘intellectual’ figure, or the film screenings and dances often attended by younger people.

With the development of Q Section (later Special Services) in 1951, agent running processes changed. Under the leadership of Bob Rodger, who had previously run agents in eastern

Germany, secure processes were established for vetting agents and safe contact with case officers, and further, source symbols were introduced to replace cryptonyms.69 With these source symbols and Q officers’ removal of identifying details from agents’ reports, it becomes significantly more difficult to trace agents through ASIO’s surveillance files and the relationships between agents and targets are obscured.

66 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Richmond Report, Russian Social Club, 14 April 1950. 67 Rhys Crawley, “Protecting the Identity of ASIO Agents: The Case of Mercia Masson,” Appendix in Horner, The Spy Catchers, 576-7. Masson was called to the stand in private, not open, sessions of the Commission hearings, but Rex Chiplin, her primary target (and indeed, friend) was also a witness and was sitting in the room. 68 Crawley, “Protecting the Identity of ASIO Agents,” 572. 69 Crawley, “Protecting the Identity of ASIO Agents,” 568. 223

J. Baker

The most prolific agent found in ASIO’s files on Soviet migrants during the early 1950s was, of course, Dr Michael Bialoguski. He was a Pole who had escaped Europe during the war, after interrogation by the NKVD, travelling by rail across the continent to Vladivostok (apparently with a one carat diamond in a tube of toothpaste), through Japan, arriving in Australia in 1941.70 In

1945, while a medical student at the University of Sydney, Bialoguski volunteered his services to

CIS. According to his own account, he looked them up in the telephone directory after he was mailed communist literature and became alarmed at Australia’s complacency toward the evils of

Soviet communism.71 Under the direction of CIS, Bialoguski joined the Russian Social Club and developed associations with Mark Younger and Nosov.72 After graduating from medical school he worked for a time in Thirroul, north of Wollongong, then returned to Sydney to establish a practice on Macquarie Street. He contacted the newly established ASIO, seeking the kind of extra employment he had engaged in with CIS, with both the money and the excitement it offered in mind.73

Dick Gamble was Bialoguski’s first ASIO case officer, likely because he was familiar with the doctor’s previous work for CIS.74 Bialoguski was given a £4 per week retainer and under

Gamble’s instruction, re-engaged with the Russian Social Club and Australia-Russia Society, on which he began reporting under the cryptonym Jack (or J.) Baker. 75 After a few months, Bialoguski was brought under the NSW Agent Master, Norman Spry (no relation to the Director-General),

70 As Frank Cain has observed, Bialoguski remains a somewhat mysterious figure and we are largely reliant on his own account of his early years, at present. Cain, Terrorism & Intelligence in Australia, 131; Michael Bialoguski, The Petrov Story (Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955), 14-18. 71 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 25-6. 72 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 321. Bialoguski claims in his memoir that he was already acquainted with Younger but obtained some translating work with the businessman in order to get closer to him, at his CIS handler’s direction. Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 29-31. 73 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 45-6; Cain, Terrorism & Intelligence, 132. 74 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 321. 75 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 48. 224

Figure 8.2: Dr. Michael Bialoguski at the Petrov Royal Commission, Darlinghurst, September 1954 Source: State Library of New South Wales, APA Collection - 42863 where he gained another code name: Philip Crane. Under Spry’s direction he was elected to the

Social Club’s committee and became prominent in the NSW Peace Council. He was also introduced to Petrov at the Russian Social Club and began developing this relationship. In

September 1951, Michael Thwaites, Director of B2 branch, instructed that Bialoguski should focus his efforts on Petrov, as ASIO suspected he was an intelligence man.76 J. Baker was soon transferred to another case officer, Jack Gilmour. This was unusual, as Gilmour was a B2 officer rather than an agent runner, but Norman Spry’s agent-running operation was riddled with security issues and further, Bialoguski was proving to be a handful.77

76 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 322, 77 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 322-3. Norman Spry was removed from his position as Agent Master only two months later, as he had apparently become well-known outside the organisation. Further, an internal investigation in 1952 showed that he had allowed agents to become aware of one another’s identities – a serious breach of security – forged reports from agents, and embezzled money intended for his agents. See Horner, The Spy Catchers, 163. 225

Gilmour began to steer Bialoguski toward the Soviet Embassy officials and TASS representatives, instructing him to focus on these figures when at the Russian Social Club and report back regarding their roles and personalities.78 But he also reported much regarding members of the Social Club and the other organisations he frequented. Bialoguski’s reports did follow the brief – he often focused on the officials and the information he could glean from them – but he was an expansive agent. He poked around for information he thought ASIO might be interested in and reported his sense of the individuals involved on the Left, their relationships to each other, and the hierarchies of their organisations.

Bialoguski’s reporting to his case officers was generally matter-of-fact. He would detail people present, the theme or event at hand, who had associated with whom, and any crumbs of information he had gleaned from conversations. He was keen on inserting his own assessments of his intelligence into his reports, though. When reporting on a conversation he had with Jacob

Horowitz regarding the latter’s newly arrived brother-in-law, Bialoguski concluded, based on his suspicions about Horowitz, that the brother-in-law had possibly ‘come to this country as part of a

Soviet organisation’ and directed ASIO to keep a close eye on him.79 He would also provide editorial comment on how true he thought others’ stories were, when he passed them on.80 When handled by Agent Master Norman Spry, Bialoguski had produced official reports based on his recollections of events, supported by the notes he kept in his diary, a process he ‘found increasingly trying.’81 With his move to Gilmour, however, came a new system – the doctor would dictate his report, which Gilmour would take down in shorthand and later type up. Bialoguski usually gave his account with the support of diarised notes, which it appears Gilmour sometimes took copies

78 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 324. 79 NAA:A6119, 6324: J. Baker Report, Mark Liebesman, 26 May 1950. Bialoguski was particularly concerned by the fact that the brother-in-law was an industrial chemist and perhaps interested in joining the CSIR. 80 Bialoguski often reported Lydia Mokras’ various claims, about herself and others, back to Gilmour and would add his own thoughts on what was true, exaggerated, or a fabrication. See, for example: NAA:A6119, 3635, ‘Bialoguski, Michael Volume 1 (Operation Fairmile)’: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile,” 10 April 1952; J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Re operation “Fairmile,” 21 April 1951. 81 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 72. 226

of and added to his file.82 Bialoguski felt this was a substantial improvement, allowing him to pass on ‘all the small yet subtle details that in themselves were unimportant, but taken together, created an understanding of atmosphere which was essential.’83 He was probably correct, but it also introduced another layer of mediation into his reporting. Gilmour was presumably, for the sake of expediency, making editorial decisions about which parts of Bialoguski’s verbal descriptions were significant or insignificant in producing his typed reports.

Bialoguski was not given to generous assessments of his left-wing peers, particularly his fellow migrants. Though his official reports on the people whose lives he had infiltrated were usually pragmatic, save for the occasional disparaging remark, the descriptions in his tell-all book were critical and sometimes downright nasty. Augusta Klodnitskaya was ‘a hopelessly frustrated woman,’ which he thought ‘prompted her to seek a reputation for intellect and personal charm.’84

Freda Lang, the Russian Social Club’s secretary was ‘endowed with more than her fair share of physical assets which seemed to be trying to burst from the seams of her frock.’85 Bella Weiner, described as ‘Jewish … small, dark and wrinkled,’ with a ‘noisy manner’ and ‘guttural voice’ was a particular target for Bialoguski’s disdain.86 Bialoguski’s attitude toward women becomes clear with only a cursory reading of his magnum opus (Evdokia Petrova, too, could not ‘by any standard’ be called ‘beautiful, but she was attractive’), but the club’s men were not exempt from his scorn either.

Frederick Razoumoff, who would later become club president, was ‘bear-like,’ with no neck, and

‘eyes that peered suspiciously through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.’ His colleague Smirnoff, an usher, was heavy-set, coarse, a ‘strong-arm man’ with dirty hands.87 Bialoguski had an abiding flair for the dramatic, which was no doubt exacerbated by his role in Petrov’s defection and the

82 NAA:A6119, 3635: J.M. Gilmour to PSO B2, Operation “Fairmile,” 27 March 1952. Pages of scrawled notes which appear to be in Bialoguski’s hand (certainly similar in appearance to that in his diaries held at the National Library) are scattered throughout some of ASIO’s files on Bialoguski, alongside Gilmour’s formal, typed reports. See particularly: NAA:A6119, 3635. 83 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 72. 84 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 42. 85 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 48. 86 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 56. 87 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 74-5; 49-50. 227

publicity it received at the Royal Commission. His account of the Petrov scandal is sensationalised, theatrical, and self-serving but even accounting for these Hollywood film-script sensibilities, the doctor’s descriptions of the migrants he lived his double life alongside convey a distinct note of scorn.

He was particularly critical of Soviet migrants who were pro-Soviet because he felt, in essence, that they should know better. Petrov was exempted from his contempt, as he had been

‘conditioned by the Soviet upbringing.’88 But Bialoguski felt that the Social Club’s members were all ‘hopelessly frustrated.’ When he outed them in the June 1955 instalment of the serialised articles which prefigured his book, Bialoguski derided his former friends with a hint of pity:

In the Russian Club frustration was all-embracing, deliberately added to and channelled into a

perverted nostalgia for Russianism of the Soviet brand. These ill-fitted souls were ready to ponder

for hours over magnificently edited and illustrated Soviet journals, displayed in the library. They

were glad to find support for the belief that the answer to their problems was not within

themselves. They were glad to read that the cause of their misery lay in a faulty capitalistic social

system. An easy way out.89

By mid-1955, Bialoguski’s role as an ASIO agent and his involvement in the defection were public knowledge. The hearings of the Royal Commission on Espionage, only a handful of which were held in camera, had gradually brought many details of ASIO’s operation regarding the Petrovs into the public domain.

The Russian Social Club was first mentioned publicly at the Commission’s Melbourne hearings in July 1954. The reference was somewhat incidental: Petrov was asked when he first met

Rupert Lockwood, the communist journalist, and he replied that Pakhomov had introduced them

88 NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY, ‘Bialoguski, Michael Dr. Vol. 2’: Amendment to “Open Letter to Petrov” attached to J.M. Gilmour to Director, Operation [Redacted], 31 July 1956. He did not appear to acknowledge that many of his migrant associates had also experienced a Soviet upbringing. 89 Michael Bialoguski, “Russian Club welcomed their secret foe,” The Herald (Melbourne), 4 June 1955, in NAA:A6119, 1 REFERENCE COPY, ‘BIALOGUSKI Michael – Volume 1.’ 228

one night at the club.90 This no doubt concerned members of the Social Club – both former and extant – and related left-wing organisations, but it would take another two months of hearings for this part of the Petrov story to emerge more fully. On 7th September, Ron Richards, ASIO’s NSW

Director, named Bialoguski as having assisted in the defection operation and revealed that he had participated in the Social Club and various ‘front’ groups while working ‘under the organisation’s direction and control.’91 Bialoguski was apparently unconcerned at being burned publicly, with an eye to his potentially glamorous and lucrative new identity as ‘Australia’s most famous spy,’ and indeed, had already begun writing his Petrov book.92

Bialoguski had expected to be called before the Commission for some time, and prepared

‘with characteristic enthusiasm and cynicism.’93 He took the stand for a number of days during the second week of September, where he ‘exuded confidence’ in answering questions and outlining aspects of the Petrov operation for the commissioners and, of course, the public.94 This was when

Sydney’s left-wing migrants knew with certainty. Bialoguski stood on the stand and testified that he had ‘posed as a Soviet sympathiser’ while all the while being ASIO’s man. He revealed that the security service had even paid his subscription fees to the Social Club, the Australia-Russia Society, and the Peace Council, and that his pro-Soviet outlook was only ‘the guise I wore: it did not represent my true outlook.’95 Bialoguski’s testimony focused on the Petrovs themselves, his involvement in the defection, and his knowledge of the documents Petrov brought with him; the

90 “At Least 100 Named in Document J,” The Age, 14 July 1954, 5. 91 “Doctors Helped Study Petrov: Inquiry Evidence,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1954, 4. Initially, this revelation seems to have been overshadowed in press reporting by Evatt being debarred from the Commission on the very same day – hence the story appearing on page four, rather than being front-page news. Admitting to the doctors’ roles publicly was, in part, a counter-play to Evatt’s announcement that he planned to call Bialoguski as a witness, presumably to expose Petrov’s notorious night-time activities, which he was already aware of, due to Sydney’s ‘comparatively small … social life.’ See: Cain, Terrorism & Intelligence, 150; Manne, The Petrov Affair, 154-7. 92 Manne, The Petrov Affair, 156. Bialoguski appeared to want to be called before the Commission to testify and wrote continually about the possibility of this occurring in his diary during August 1954. He even pinned his Royal Commission summons within the diary’s pages. See: Michael Bialoguski Diaries 1953-1984, NLA MS 7748. 93 Manne, The Petrov Affair, 156. 94 Manne, The Petrov Affair, 155-7. The Commissioners were also shown ASIO’s ‘voluminous and lurid reports’ regarding Petrov and Bialoguski’s various jaunts, along with other reports regarding the defection itself, privately in chambers, away from the public hearings. 95 “Man’s Pose as Friend of Russia,” Sydney Morning Herald, 10 September 1954, 1. 229

Social Club and its members would make only fleeting appearances in the Commission’s report.96

Bialoguski’s migrant associates were publicly denounced in full only when he published his own account in 1955.

But his former friends had been concerned months earlier, very likely from the first headlines about the defection on 14th April. As explored in Chapter Seven, Jacob Horowitz told a friend just a month later that he suspected Bialoguski had worked for the security service and was responsible for Petrov’s defection. And if Horowitz thought so, there must have been others within the left-wing migrant community who presumed similarly. This is not to say that Bialoguski had long been subject to suspicion. When interviewed by ASIO in 1955, George Klodnitsky remarked that ‘he imagined that Dr Bialoguski had reported on them quite frequently,’ causing

Augusta Klodnitskaya to comment that ‘they were more or less deceived by Bialoguski … [who] impressed them as a likable person and they had invited him to their home.’97 It seems that many of the Social Club’s members really were taken in by Bialoguski and were shocked that he had betrayed them. There is no evidence that Bialoguski attempted to attend the club after the defection – perhaps he assumed, even before he was outed publicly, that he would not receive a warm welcome.

But J. Baker had not disappeared when the Petrovs defected. Bialoguski was not attending the Social Club, but he kept up some of his other associations. In July 1954, the doctor attended a

96 The club was mentioned only as the location of Bialoguski and Petrov’s introduction and referenced by witnesses called before the Commission, like Nicholas Daghian and Dr. Max Stephens, as the place where they met the TASS men and other Soviet officials. Other left-wing figures, such as Jean Ferguson, of Sydney’s Australia-Russia Society, and John Rodgers, of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society in Melbourne, do appear in the report, but migrant activists are largely absent. The exceptions to this are two Latvians, Andreis Fridenbergs, who had contact with Petrov and Platkais, and Gunars Ritenbergs, who was working as ‘a self-styled penetration agent’ in his contact with the Soviets – both were called before the Commission. Vincenc Divisek, a Czech, also testified. He claimed he was sent to Australia as a Soviet illegal but had contacted CIS after arriving. There were also fleeting appearances by Nicholas Daghian, as discussed in Chapter Six, and a Harbintsy, Nikolai Novikov, both contacts that Petrov was supposed to follow up but, typically, had not. See: Report of the Royal Commission on Espionage (Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer, 1955), 28; 266; 282; Manne, The Petrov Affair, 208-10; 211-13; M.G.L. Dunn, “The Royal Commission on Espionage, 1954-1955,” (PhD Diss., University of Adelaide, 1979), 209-221. 97 NAA:A6119, 1 REFERENCE COPY: SSO & FO to DDG Ops, George Klodnitsky-Claude and wife Augusta Klodnitsky-Claude, 4 April 1955. 230

function held by the Schubert Society, a group he described as communist, though being himself a violinist one imagines it likely related primarily to music. There, he was invited to a function to be held by the Slovene Association at the Maccabean Hall.98 Bella Weiner and Jacob Horowitz were apparently the prime movers behind the Slovene Association (which was ‘cultural at the front, then political,’ according to a member), so it was perhaps wise that Bialoguski did not attend.99 He did, however, still attend the NSW Peace Council’s Annual Conference in August 1954. Bialoguski contributed to discussion about the difficulties face by left-wing council members obtaining permission to travel overseas and toward the end of the conference was nominated (by someone he didn’t know) for election to the committee.100 He wrote in his diary that when he was nominated: ‘I noticed immediately consternation in Cecil and Lily’s faces and behaviour.’101 He was likely referring to Cecil Holmes, a New Zealand-born film maker and Communist Party member, and Lily Williams, Secretary of the Sydney Jewish Council, who were both active in the

Peace Council and had known the doctor for some time.102 Whether these left-wing figures did indeed feel suspicion or even animosity toward Bialoguski at this time is difficult to tell, though

Williams certainly made her feelings clear later, after he had been outed, refusing to shake

Bialoguski’s proffered hand at a reception and explaining curtly to her interlocuter that ‘He is a

Police spy.’103

98 Diary Entry, 16 July 1954, NLA MS 7748; NAA:A6119, 325 REFERENCE COPY, ‘Doctor Michael BIALOGUSKI – Volume 3’: Report No. 21590, Dr Miron Linder, 20 September 1957. Unfortunately, there is little information on Bialoguski’s activities during the period between April and July, 1954. ASIO did not consistently collect Bialoguski’s own source reports in the open-access files under his name, and these files’ coverage of the period is patchy. Bialoguski’s own diaries, too, are somewhat sporadic and cover the period from 1953 up to the defection, and then July to October 1954. 99 Diary Entry, 16 July 1954, NLA MS 7748. 100 NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY: File Note, Bialoguski (Dr.), NSW Q 9267, 25 August 1954. Assumedly this refers to gaining permission from Australian authorities to travel to communist countries for international peace movement congresses and the like. 101 Diary Entry, 14 August 1954, NLA MS 7748. 102 Diary Entry, 14 August 1954, NLA MS 7748; NAA:A6119, 881, ‘Cecil William HOLMES part 2’: Movements of leading party members from ASIO Quarterly Summary No. 2/56, 30 June 1956; NAA:A6119, 6324: Assessment for PSO B1: Horowitz, Jacob & Horowitz, Dora, 26 June 1957. 103 NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY: File Note, Bialoguski (Dr.), ACT Q 1243, 7 July 1955. 231

Prior to being named at the Royal Commission, Bialoguski appears to have gone about his business as before, attempting to ‘test the waters’ and perhaps gain information regarding his acquaintances’ views on the Petrov defection, presumably to pass back to ASIO. In July 1954 he recorded a trip to one of his usual haunts, a restaurant run by one Mr Rosenstein. He thought the

Rosenstein family appeared uncomfortable at his appearance, but he got Mr Rosenstein talking as he placed his order, asking him what he thought about the ‘whole Petrov matter.’ Rosenstein said he couldn’t understand all the talk at the Commission about Petrov’s drinking, crying ‘he wasn’t a drunkard!’, to which Bialoguski sympathetically agreed.104 Not all of Bialoguski’s former friends reacted with Lily Williams’ antipathy. When he saw Mr. Hyman, likely a member of the Sydney

Jewish Council, at the pharmacy just a week after his Royal Commission testimony, Bialoguski felt the other man was ‘hostile but tried to cover it up.’105 They talked; Hyman said the whole Petrov matter was a ‘great shock’ to them and Bialoguski explained his own position (at length). Hyman’s reply was simple: ‘one learns by one’s own experiences.’ According to Bialoguski, Hyman told him that their relations ‘would not alter as far as he is concerned,’ and the two parted on friendly terms.

Hyman sounded ill at ease in Bialoguski’s company. But his feelings toward the doctor, even after he had been unmasked, appeared ambivalent and there were likely others among his former associates who felt similarly.

It appears there were mixed feelings within the communities that Bialoguski had infiltrated and then left behind. Most of these groups were severely shaken by the public revelation of

Bialoguski’s double life. Some were entirely hostile toward him, a Judas-like figure who was assumedly still passing information to ASIO (which he was). Some felt, like the Klodnitskys, that they had been entirely taken in by the charming and self-assured doctor. Horowitz thought he was

104 Diary Entry, 20 July 1954, NLA MS 7748. 105 Diary Entry, 16 September 1954, NLA MS 7748. This was likely the same Mr. Hyman who was on the Sydney Jewish Council – Bialoguski had attended a Council meeting at Hyman’s home in 1952 and reported on it (Jacob and Dora Horowitz were also there) – and was elected to the Jewish Board of Deputies at the same time as Hyam Brezniak, Jacob Horowitz, and Nate Zusman. See: NAA:A6119, 325 REFERENCE COPY: Report No. 19840, Dr Kuba Horowitz, 18 June 1957; NAA:A6119, 6325: Intercept Report, Hyam Brezniak, 14 and 15 November 1960. 232

domineering and morally suspect, a corrupting influence on Petrov. Clearly some of his former friends wanted nothing to do with him and ostracised him. Others were ambivalent or perhaps tolerant, like Mr Hyman. Lydia Mokras lived with Bialoguski for two years after the Petrov Affair, though the relationship had always been turbulent, and they later split dramatically.106

In most cases, of course, ASIO’s informants were not outed publicly and rarely with the high drama of the Bialoguski revelation. But there were surely others whom these communities suspected of informing. As explored in Chapter Five, Sasha Dukin appears to have been run out of Sydney based on such suspicions and perhaps with good cause. Indeed, though Bialoguski’s deception and the broader concept of paid informants tend to suggest that one was either on

ASIO’s side or not, the reality was often more complex. Migrants were frequently both subject and source in ASIO’s investigations and as such, while some informants were indeed exiled from the community there must also have been instances of accommodation.

Migrants as Subject & Source

Lydia Mokras went by four or five different surnames and three different nationalities between the

1940s and 1950s.107 This kind of fluidity was not uncommon for DPs seeking resettlement, but most settled into a more stable identity once in Australia. Lydia, however, continued to invent and reinvent herself on both sides of the Cold War divide, and indeed, to rival intelligence services.

She managed to thoroughly confuse both Soviet intelligence, who thought she must have been

106 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 464. 107 NAA:A11929, 742-743, ‘MOKRAS Rudolf born 10 September 1918; Lidia born 25 May 1919; Vera born 1 October 1929’; NAA:A6119, 192: [Redacted] to PSO B2, Lydia Mokracova (nee Janovska) – Sydney, 1 May 1951; NAA:A6119, 192: F.O. & S.S.O. to B2, Lydia Mokras, Dr. Michael Bialoguski, 13 October 1955; NAA:A6119, 192: DG to RD NSW & RD ACT, Jaks, Jindrich, 13 September 1955. Mokras was the married name on her documents when she arrived, but she also sometimes went by the feminine version in Sydney (Mokrasova/Mokracova) and reverted back to her maiden name at others (Janovski or Janovska), particularly after the Royal Commission and Bialoguski’s book publication. She took on Czech nationality with the marriage to Mokras but claimed also that she was born in Dnipropetrovsk in 1919 and was thus Ukrainian. This, of course, was a common claim for Russian DPs attempting to secure resettlement. At other times, she claimed to be a Russian. Eastern European borderland identities of these kinds were often complex and fluid, so she could have had some attachment to all of these nationalities. But she does seem to have harnessed this fluidity for her own purposes, employing different identities where it suited her. 233

working for Australian counter-intelligence, and ASIO, who thought at various times that she must have been working for the Soviets.108 After her involvement in the Petrov Case and later, Operation

Boomerang, ASIO’s internal history summarised that the woman ‘remain[ed] somewhat of an enigma, due largely to the complex characteristics of the woman herself, who, seemingly without malice, wished to be in on all intrigues, and usually on both sides!’109 Bialoguski ended up advising

ASIO that he thought Mokras was ‘pathologically lying,’ but she does appear to have had quite a number of encounters with various intelligence services. Many of her stories were exaggerations or fabrications, certainly, but perhaps she had reason, given her experiences, to see spies around every corner and wish to be involved.

Mokras would deny any involvement with intelligence when she spoke to ASIO following the Petrov Affair, but when they interviewed her again in the late 1950s she told a rather different story.110 She explained that in 1939, as a young woman and recently appointed secretary of her local Komsomol, she was approached by an NKVD man.111 He recruited her and she was sent to a political training school, where she was learnt languages (German, Czech, and English), social etiquette, weapons handling, and the use of tape recording equipment. She claimed the NKVD wanted her to infiltrate behind German lines as the German invasion commenced – she was equipped and sent to the frontline, in expectation of her being taken prisoner as the Germans advanced. She said that she was indeed taken prisoner and became a forced labourer, ending up as a domestic worker in a government minister’s house.112 With the arrival of American troops, she was moved to a DP camp. After hearing the stories which circulated in the camps, she became fearful of repatriation and married a Czech, Rudolf Mokras, in order to protect herself (though she also claimed to have informed the NKVD men who visited the DP camp of the marriage and

108 McKnight, Australia’s spies and their secrets, 102. 109 NAA:A6122, 2036, ‘History of ASIO by Bob SWAN – Volume 5’: Activities of ASIO: 1955-1962. 110 NAA:A6119, 192: Lidia Mokras Statement, 10 June 1954. 111 NAA:A6119, 4715, ‘MOKRAS, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 2’: Lidia Janovski Statement, 25 September 1958. 112 This is an odd claim, given that she was likely living in occupied territory (in Ukraine) and could have just volunteered to work for Germany. Being taken prisoner, further, would likely have put her in camp where she would have been of far less use to Soviet intelligence. 234

they approved). When they went to Czechoslovakia, she was apparently contacted by Soviet officials there and that the same occurred after migrating to Australia. She told ASIO that the

Soviet Ambassador, Lifanov, himself visited her. He was apparently aware of her NKVD past and encouraged her first to repatriate and later, to associate with other Russians in Sydney along with keeping him informed regarding Petrov’s activities.

It was quite the spy story, and it wasn’t her first. In 1951, Mokras told Bialoguski and Sasha

Dukin that she just had to go to Brisbane, implying ‘that it was a “mission”.’113 More infamously, she produced what was apparently an NKVD camera and, in ASIO’s words, ‘ostentatiously photographed Sydney Harbour and Mascot aerodrome and generally played the part of the would- be Mata Hari’ with Bialoguski.114 After Mokras’ confessional interview about her NVKD background, Spry remarked:

It may well be that she has entertained notions of engaging in intelligence activity as an agent or

double-agent. I regard her as something of an adventuress in the intelligence sphere who has

proved a considerable nuisance … She went on to give a story, with which I am far from satisfied,

as to her alleged activities in war-time Germany, post-war Europe and finally Australia.115

Spry wasn’t the only one who harboured doubts about Lydia having worked for the NVKD.

Petrov, too, had checked this with Moscow Centre in the early 1950s when Mokras not-so-subtly intimated that she was involved with intelligence, and they reported no trace of her.116 But the

113 NAA:A6122, 2799: J. Baker Report, Russian Social Club – Cultural Evening, 9 July 1951. 114 Quoted in Manne, The Petrov Affair, 12-13. According to Bialoguski the camera was ‘a Russian Leica, which is a Soviet-produced replica of the German Leica … [with] an inscription in Russian stating that it was manufactured in Kharkov under N.K.V.D. supervision.’ He initially thought this had significance but later decided that similar cameras could be purchased outside the Soviet Union and thus, it did not. Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 68. 115 NAA:A6119, 4725: C.C.F. Spry to Attorney-General’s Department, 27 January 1959. 116 NAA:A6119, 4715: TS Memorandum M/1/11, Lidia Janovska (formerly Mokras) (nee Janovska), January 1959. 235

Figure 8.3: Lydia Mokras & Michael Bialoguski meet Soviet Ambassador Lifanov at the Soviet Embassy, c. early 1950s Source: NAA:A6119, 3635 possibility of her having been an NKVD recruit continued to appear in reports on Mokras’ background and in Horner’s Official History, he states that she ‘admitted she had been recruited and trained by the NKVD’ without any major qualification.117

It is possible, of course, that Mokras had brushes with the NKVD without actually having been trained as an agent, as many Soviet citizens did. When in Australia, some of her stories were fabrications but her proximity to espionage was not imagined. Much of her time in the early 1950s was spent with both recruited agents and trained intelligence officers – Bialoguski, Petrov, and

Pakhomov, at the very least. Mokras was also friendly with several officials of the Czech Consulate-

117 NAA:A6119, 4717: S.O. Aliens to O.I.C. Aliens, Assessments: Jyotikana Ray, 10 July 1968; Horner, The Spy Catchers, 468-9. Horner does note that Lydia ‘remained an enigma,’ but does not mention any of ASIO’s doubts regarding the veracity of her NKVD story. 236

General, some of whom were almost certainly intelligence officers conducting espionage on behalf of the Soviets.118 She was a subject in Operation Boomerang, involved with Bob Wake, Alan

Dalziel, and Hyam Brezniak’s clandestine group which sought to investigate and discredit ASIO.119

But she also gave several interviews to ASIO during the 1950s, usually at her own instigation, as she wanted to provide them with a particular piece of information (which they dutifully recorded, but didn’t usually place much stock in).120 Like Jerzy Bielski and perhaps Sasha Dukin, she was both subject and source for the intelligence agencies around her. Likely of her own volition,

Mokras frequently and consistently brushed up against informants and intelligence officers and maintained complex relationships with these individuals and the organisations they represented.

Bialoguski’s position was more straightforward – he seemed to perceive himself as an infiltrator and built relationships with targets in order to report on them, intending to break with them if he was outed or they ceased to be of interest.121 But Mokras operated in ambiguous shades of grey. She wasn’t clearly on one side or the other and her position shifted in response to unknown influences. Perhaps she was indeed drawn to drama and intrigue, and involved herself with whatever organisation(s) best fit this desire. Equally, she may have shifted her alliances from a sense of self-preservation. But just as DPs’ political views could accommodate contradictions, so

118 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 460. Horner confirms that there were Czech officers spying for the Soviets but does not give specific names. Mokras was friendly with some of ASIO’s main surveillance targets, though, and more than likely one of them was with intelligence. She knew Miloslav Jandik, Consul-General during the late 1950s, and a ‘locally- engaged clerk, Josef Triska, who provided a link to the CPA.’ Her lengthiest connection with the Czechs was via Jaroslav Kafka, Acting Consul-General 1951-54 who returned to Australia again in 1959, and his wife, Vera. See, for example: NAA:6119, 4715: Report No. 39170, Lidia Janovski, 18 November 1959; NAA:A6119, 4716, ‘Mokras, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 3’: Intercept Report, Alan John Dalziel, 19-20 January 1961; NAA:A6119, 4716: Intercept Report, Lidia Janovski, 20-21 February 1961; NAA:A6119, 4716: Intercept Report, Alan John Dalziel, 27-28 March 1961. 119 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 464-5. 120 NAA:A6119, 192: Lidia Mokras Statement, 10 June 1954; NAA:A6119, 192: SSO & PSO B1 to PSO B2, [Redacted] and Cabin 12, 11 June 1954; NAA:A6119, 192: Interview with Lidia Mokras by Messrs. [Redacted] on 14 April 1955; NAA:A6119, 192: Interview with Lidia Mokras at 12 Lord Street, Roseville, between 12 noon-4.15pm on Monday 4 July, 1955; NAA:A6119, 192: Interview with Lidia Mokras at 12 Lord Street, Roseville, on Thursday 7 July 1955, at approx. 2.45pm; NAA:A6119, 4715: Lidia Janovski Statement, 25 September 1958; NAA:A6119, 4715: Lydia Janovski Statement, 27 October 1958; NAA:A6119, 4715: Operation ‘Boomerang’ Interview with Lidia Janovski on 8 June 1959. 121 The exception for Bialoguski was perhaps actually Mokras herself – ASIO were continually unsure about whether he had been ‘taken in’ by her or not, and he continued to see her after ASIO warned him off her multiple times. Manne, The Petrov Affair, 12-13. 237

too could their loyalties. Perhaps Mokras did not feel the need to be allied to one side or the other.

She certainly doesn’t appear to have burnt all her bridges. Though she spoke with ASIO on multiple occasions and told some of her associates about this, she does not seem to have perceived herself as an infiltrator and was not ostracised like Bialoguski. Though she lived with the doctor for a few years post-Petrov, she maintained strong friendships with figures like Augusta

Klodnitskaya and Hyam & Paula Brezniak – Klodnitskaya was even Matron of Honour when

Lydia married again in 1961.122

In the shadowy world in which Lydia Mokras moved, seeing spies around each corner was logical. Apart from the connections she maintained, Soviet DPs came from a context where they would expect an ASIO. They were used to thinking that some people they encountered would be informers and that informing might be an option for them, if they needed it for self-protection.123

If not the NKVD, it had been the Gestapo in occupied Europe, or Japanese occupiers and BREM in Manchuria. Those involved with the Left in Australia also anticipated surveillance, though perhaps less acutely. ASIO deliberately cultivated the impression of omnipresence at times. In the lead up to the referendum on banning the Communist Party in 1951, ASIO developed comprehensive surveillance of the CPA’s National Congress in Sydney. During the later stages of the gathering, officers ‘deliberately indicated to the delegates that they were under surveillance’ and

Spry even asked Menzies to refer to information collected during the congress in upcoming

122 NAA:A6119, 4715: Report No. 39169, Lidia Janovski, 16 November 1959; NAA:A6119, 4715: Report No. 39552, Lidia Janovski, 14 December 1959; NAA:A6119, 4715: Intercept Report, Paula Brezniak, 11 July 1960; NAA:A6119, 4715: Intercept Report, Hyam Brezniak, 6 October 1960; NAA:A6119, 4716: Intercept Report, Lidia Janovski, 2 August 1960; NAA:A6119, 4716: Intercept Report, Lidia Janovski, 13 February 1961; NAA:A6119, 4716: Intercept Report, Lidia Janovski, 8 March 1961; NAA:A6119, 4717, ‘Mokras, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 4’: Intercept Report, Lidia Janovski, 23-26 June 1961. When Spry advised Menzies of Operation Boomerang in August 1958, he told him that ‘Apparently, she [Klodnitskaya] has been given by Dr. Evatt the task of looking after Miss Janovska in the role of comfortable confidant,’ see: NAA:A6122, 2036: Activities of ASIO: 1955-1962. 123 On the context of DPs who, like Mokras, had lived in the Soviet Union before the war, see: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 164-189. 238

Figure 8.4: ASIO photographic surveillance of Lydia Mokras at Mascot Airport, Sydney, 1960 Source: NAA:A6122, 1755 speeches.124 The Director-General felt this kind of revelation would cause disorder and anxiety within the party, and potentially discredit them in Moscow’s eyes.125 During Operation Boomerang, too, ASIO made the Wake-Dalziel-Brezniak group aware that they were watching in an attempt to create dissension within their ranks.126 These strategies were the exception to the rule and ASIO sought to remain in the shadows most of the time, but their migrant targets were still sometimes aware of, or imagined, surveillance.

124 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 189-190. 125 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 190. 126 NAA:A6122, 2036: Activities of ASIO: 1955-1962. 239

ASIO’s establishment in 1949 was publicly announced, so many migrants had likely heard of the organisation. Bialoguski said that it was hearing this news which prompted him to ask his

CIS handler how to contact ASIO, to apply for a position as an intelligence officer (he remained an agent though, when ASIO advised that they did not have any vacancies for officers).127 And as discussed above, under Spry, telephone numbers for the organisation had been published in 1951, to reduce the organisation’s anonymity somewhat. Spry even wanted to launch an advertising campaign on the radio and in the press, along the lines of a similar effort by the FBI, but was persuaded against this by the Prime Minister’s Department.128 Public knowledge of ASIO remained hazy in these early years, though, a vague, faceless ‘Security service’ with anonymous ‘security men.’129

It was with the Petrov Affair and particularly, the Royal Commission on Espionage, that

ASIO moved out of the shadows somewhat. The organisation’s name became widely known and it gained a public face, as officers like Spry, Ron Richards, and Jack Gilmour (Bialoguski’s B2 handler) gave evidence publicly, and other officers were seen daily in the Commission hearing room.130 The Commission’s proceedings were published every day for months, often with large sections of verbatim transcription. Australians heard in detail, for the first time, about their security service and the spy drama that played out covertly on city streets. Revelations about Bialoguski and other informants’ infiltration, their debriefings in cars, parks and cemeteries, and Soviet spies who wandered the streets, attended the theatre, and partied in night-clubs certainly increased suspicion within left-wing communities. It also, surely, magnified the spectre of the ‘security man’ and the ‘informant’ (Australian or Soviet) in many minds, particularly those of the left-wing migrants who were so close to the source of the drama. Some, like Boris Binetsky and the

127 Bialoguski, The Petrov Story, 45; Horner, The Spy Catchers, 321. 128 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 187. 129 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 349. ASIO’s name had never been a secret (unlike MI5), but it was usually referred to in public statements as the ‘Security Service.’ 130 Horner, The Spy Catchers, 349. 240

Klodnitskys, were themselves interviewed in connection with the Commission, giving ASIO a real, likely memorable, face in the form of its field officers. These shock-waves even reached beyond

Australian shores, with some left-leaning Russians still in China fearing that their changes of migration to Australia were damaged by the new visibility espionage had gained.131

Whether by their own choice or ASIO’s, many postwar migrants interacted with the security service after settling in Australia. For some, particularly those who were less politically active, it was cursory examination upon applying for naturalisation. For others, ASIO kept to the shadows and watched, opening mail and quietly sounding out informants while the migrant proceeded, potentially unaware. For those whose naturalisation was blocked by ASIO’s security advice, the organisation’s presence was shadowy but the effects of its work clearly evident. Some interacted directly with Security, offering up information and/or their services as an informant.

Some of these became outsiders in their communities as a result. Still others, like Lydia Mokras, pursued the fringes of this shadow world, interacting with intelligence officers and informants on all sides as they negotiated their new lives. ASIO played quite a role in the migrant experience, either because of actual surveillance conducted or the myth of omnipresence they cultivated, which shaped how migrants thought and acted. But it was no Panopticon, even where the organisation tried to inculcate the perception that it was. ASIO lacked the resources to really be watching all of the time and migrants continued to make their own decisions about where they went, with whom they associated, and which parts of the world of intelligence that wanted to be a part of, and which they would avoid – though they sometimes got stuck with a surveillance detail anyway.

131 See the case of Ella Masloff and family: Antonia Finnane, Far From Where? Jewish journeys from Shanghai to Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 226-7. 241

Conclusion

There is no longer a basement club at 727 George Street. The old building was demolished to make way for a glass-fronted corporate complex with a twenty-four-hour gym. But the Russian

Social Club still operates, now in Lidcombe, in Sydney’s western suburbs. The Russian House

(now named Russkiĭ Klub: the Russian Club), is just a few kilometres away in Strathfield. The Social

Club is smaller and the portraits of Lenin and Stalin are gone, as is the red flag with the hammer and sickle. Instead, on either side of the main hall’s stage hang the Australian flag and the Russian tricolour, the flag of the present Russian Federation. The tricolour probably made no appearances at the Social Club prior to perestroika; it had been the imperial flag prior to 1917, a symbol of

Tsardom and the White Army rarely seen under the Bolsheviks. The Strathfield Russian Club also displays its members’ dual identities beside its main stage: Australian flag on the left, Russian on the right. But their tricolour is slightly different, overlayed with the double-headed eagle coat of arms.1 For Sydney’s Russians, the Cold War seems to belong in the past. The two clubs and their two flags are not so diametrically opposed as they once were on George Street – both use the tricolour, and the double-headed eagle is Russia’s present coat of arms, displayed on Russian passports – but their interpretations of their own diasporic identities are still slightly divergent.

All migrants negotiate dual (and sometimes multiple) identities and loyalties, retaining ties to homeland which exist alongside connections to a new country. Many of the Russian House’s members retained loyalty to a pre-Revolutionary Russia, and this attachment was not seen as a threat – indeed, it was typically an advantage – in Cold War Australia. For pro-communist and pro-Soviet DPs, it was a markedly different story. Their dual loyalty oriented them toward a Soviet

1 The tricolour with the coat of arms was the Standard of the Tsar of Russia during the seventeenth century and various other flags employing the double-headed eagle were longstanding Imperial Standards in various contexts. The tricolour with coat of arms has been used as the Russian Federation’s Presidential Standard since 1994. The Russian Club’s tricolour is a version of this presidential standard which also includes gold lettering of the word Rossiia. The Russkiĭ Klub logo, too, features the coat of arms overlayed on red, white, and blue. 242

homeland which they had left, or chosen not to be repatriated to, and this homeland frequently seemed on the brink of becoming a wartime enemy in the early 1950s. A few Soviet DPs dealt with this dual loyalty by leaving Australia – the contradictions it presented became too great. But most remained, though they never seemed to clearly articulate the reason why, if they were so pro-

Soviet, they didn’t return. Most were able to accommodate the duality, with time. Some resisted naturalisation, despite the benefits it may have offered, keeping their options open in case they did decide to return, or to go elsewhere. Others sought the security offered by naturalisation but retained their Soviet-oriented gaze and association with left-wing individuals and organisations.

Indeed, naturalisation afforded the right to vote and thus, migrants could then engage with

Australia’s political processes directly. Most also maintained connections to Soviet, or Soviet-bloc, officials stationed in Australia. And perhaps this was the best of both worlds for Soviet DPs who didn’t want to return – they could continue living in Australia, but with a tangible connection to the Soviet homeland. They generally congregated with others who had similar dual loyalties, at

émigré hubs like the Russian Social Club and the Jewish Councils, or haunts like the Australia-

Russia Societies, where they could mix with both migrants and Australians. Managing their dual loyalties involved negotiating state authority and suspicion, and left-wing Soviet DPs accommodated ASIO’s surveillance in most instances, sometimes even mobilising the security service for their own purposes.

The Australian state tackled the issue of suspicious migrants predominantly by watching and waiting. Immigration officials screened incoming migrants in some cases (with varying degrees of success) and did some monitoring of the migrant camps in Australia. Once DPs resettled in

Australian communities, however, it was mostly up to ASIO, who assembled dossiers in the shadows, watching for and recording signs of divided loyalty. It’s no coincidence that naturalisation features prominently in the stories included here: it was the state’s formal checkpoint for loyalty, the culmination of these efforts to assess migrants’ fealty. For early Cold War-era ASIO, admission into the Australian body politic required allegiance not only to democracy but also to capitalism.

243

If a migrant believed in communism, their loyalty to Australia would likely be trumped by their politics when push came to shove. Naturalisation was also considered a natural progression; those who didn’t want to be naturalised were doubly suspect, as retaining an overseas citizenship and identity was a threat to the concept of migrant assimilation.

The Department of Immigration were the gatekeepers of naturalisation, but ASIO’s advice usually informed their decision-making. Where ASIO deemed an applicant’s loyalties potentially suspect, naturalisation was often withheld. And in the cases examined here, it appears that a clearance previously withheld could be granted where a migrant demonstrated that they would prioritise their allegiance to the Australian state over their left-wing associates – in short, to those who were willing to inform. It was not always so difficult to gain naturalisation; some of ASIO’s officers penned measured assessments which critically examined the evidence and took migrants’ own claims about their politics seriously. But for others, like the Horowitz family, it was an uphill battle in which the onus of proof fell on the migrant to demonstrate loyalty, rather than on ASIO to prove disloyalty.

ASIO’s surveillance and appraisal of migrants in the early Cold War period varied in quality and quantity, often dependent on the particular officer(s) involved. Some accepted informants’ reports perfunctorily and advanced flawed assessments, because they fitted with preconceived ideas or previous assessments. Others presented reports which were sensitive to some of the complexities of the communities they monitored. Much depended on the officer’s familiarity with the groups and individuals they were assessing. Generally, however, ASIO had difficulty perceiving individuals in nuanced ways, and understanding the contradictions and ambiguities of their subjects’ views. Underlying many of their assessments is an implicit assumption that these migrants could not have more than one real loyalty – anything could be just a ‘front’ to throw off suspicion.

In pursuit of communists, ASIO were also sometimes willing to highlight evidence which fit their pre-conceived conclusion and discard conflicting data. In this ‘wilderness of mirrors,’ the lines

244

between dissent and radicalism, friendship and espionage, and genuine ambiguity and deception, were easily muddied. For ASIO, it was often difficult to accept that a subject had genuinely changed their views – such pronouncements could always be some kind of play, made solely for

ASIO’s benefit.

But people do change, and ASIO did eventually recognise this. This is a Cold War story and the intense anxieties of the early 1950s did ease, periodically. In almost all of the cases examined in this dissertation, ASIO’s surveillance gradually dropped off. Many wound up leading quieter, or less political, lives in the decades which followed. Jerzy Bielski, the migrant unionist, continued to agitate for migrant workers throughout the 1960s, writing letters to newspapers and parliament.2 His issues with the Polish community also continued, culminating in his facing court over allegedly forging signatures on wills.3 He skipped bail and went overseas in late 1970, spending the next eight years travelling the world, writing, lecturing, managing a hotel, and even joining an archaeological dig. When he returned to Australia in 1978, according to his wife Joan, Jerzy ‘entered the most peaceful period of his life.’4 His ASIO file ends with his departure from Australia, and they apparently never picked him back up when he returned.5 Most Australians knew him as

George by then and he remained in Australia, an ‘assimilated’ Polish-Australian. He lived his life

2 Jerzy moved on to new issues as the 1960s progressed, particularly arranging charter flights so that migrants could visit their homelands affordably and campaigns about the gender imbalance of men and women migrants, leading to what he saw as masses of unattached and unhappy male migrants. NAA:A6119, 5107, BIELSKI, Jerzy Stefan Volume 3’: Report by John M. Lines, Investigation Officer, Special Reports Branch, 1 November 1968; NAA:A6119, 5107: J. Bielski, “The lucky country – for girls,” Sunday Telegraph, 4 May 1969. 3 Jerzy always maintained his innocence and believed the court case was the result of a conspiracy between a Polish Travel Agent, Stefanovski (whom Bielski said he had outed as a Nazi collaborator), and the Third Secretary at the Polish Consulate. Jerzy also claimed that Stefanovski was an ASIO informer for several years and continually denounced him as a communist. Judith Steanes interview with George [Jerzy] Bielski, 9-13 September 2002, Tape 3 Side 2, SLNSW MLOH494. 4 “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 2009: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nazi-hunter-turned-fighter-for-migrants-20090306-8re3.html. 5 Jerzy’s return doesn’t get a mention in Joan Bielski’s file, either – she was recorded a few times in 1973 and 1974 for her own activity, but then her file, too, ended. See: NAA:A6119, 4488: ‘BIELSKI, Joan Margaret (nee Ward).’ Nor did the authorities attempt to track Jerzy down on the earlier charges or for skipping bail, see: “Nazi hunter turned fighter for migrants,” Sydney Morning Herald. 245

outside ASIO’s gaze from the late 1970s. His ideas about unionism and workers’ rights never faded, though, and he expounded their importance at length in his oral history, recorded in 2002.6

Lydia Mokras, the ‘intelligence adventuress,’ also seems to have found a quieter existence.

She married Frantisek Kunc, a Czech, in 1961 and they settled into the rhythms of family life, raising a son. Espionage, which had so captured her attention in previous years, seems to have faded from her world. ASIO thought married life had straightened her out, reporting that ‘prior to her marriage, her reputation had been that of an immoral person who had bad associations with males from all walks of life,’ but post-marriage, she came to no further notice.7 The spectres of

Lydia’s past re-emerged when, in her eighties, she was approached by the filmmaker Peter Butt regarding his documentary I, Spry. It took a few months for her to agree to an interview. She was reticent to reopen the 1950s and Butt told the ABC that she wanted it kept out of her present, musing ‘I think she lives in a tight community and people could misread her role in this affair.’8

Lydia did appear briefly in I, Spry, with her face shadowed so that she couldn’t be identified – perhaps the dramatic did still appeal to her a little. But in the main, she seems to have left the high drama of politics and espionage behind her.

Michael Bialoguski, ASIO’s man in the Social Club, maintained a little more flair for show business. He had hoped to get rich from his Petrov book and the screenplay adaptation he wrote, but was hampered by the Petrovs’ refusal to sign a release.9 He had some financial hardship and was briefly imprisoned for failing to pay alimony to his ex-wife; he claimed in court that he had

6 Judith Steanes Interview, Tape 3 Side 1, SLNSW MLOH494. 7 NAA:A6119, 4717, ‘MOKRAS, Lydia (nee Janovski) Volume 4’: S.O. Aliens to O.I.C. Aliens, Assessments: Jyotikana Ray, 10 July 1968. 8 Peter Butt, “ABC film looks at Petrov Affair,” interview by Mark Colvin, ABC PM, 2 November 2010, transcript, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3055295.htm. 9 NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY, ‘Bialoguski, Michael Dr. Vol 2’: Michael Bialoguski to Vladimir & Evdokia Petrov, 26 October 1955; NAA:A6119, 2/REFERENCE COPY: Michael Bialoguski to Sir Eric Harrison, 12 December 1955. A BBC series based on the book was eventually produced, however, see: NAA:A6119, 2646, 'Doctor Michael BIALOGUSKI - Volume 4': Newspaper clipping, “Petrov Case as play on BBC,” The News, South Australia, 28 September 1966. 246

lost money due to the Petrov scandal’s impact on his then dwindling medical practice.10 In this case, it was Bialoguski who kept in touch with ASIO, rather than the other way around. He contacted Jack Gilmour, his former case officer, from time to time – keeping him up to date on information he came across, sending Christmas wishes, and even conveying his expected departure date when emigrating to the UK in 1964.11 He settled there with a new wife, had three children, opened another medical practice, and pursued some of his musical dreams.12 He even did medical examinations for prospective migrants at Australia House every few weeks.13 Bialoguski did keep up-to-date with Petrov-related news. Characteristically, he complained to Michael Thwaites,

ASIO’s former Director of B2 branch, when the intelligence officer wrote his own account of the

Petrov Affair, called Truth Will Out, in the 1980s. The doctor claimed that Thwaites’ portrayal of his role in the defection was inaccurate (and insufficiently generous), that the book insinuated that he had tried to profit from the affair (which he had), and that it compared him to Kim Philby.14 In all though, it would appear he had a much quieter life in the UK. There was no further contact with ASIO, though they continued to collect newspaper clippings where the doctor popped up, keeping a passive eye on his activities.15

Natalia Stashevska, too, departed Australia but after this her trail runs cold – most likely she repatriated to the Soviet Union with her parents, but where she ended up and whether she liked Soviet life as much as she anticipated are unknown. There were other young repatriates, like the socialist Natalia Koschevska, who, according to her daughter, was taken aback by her

10 NSWSA: Supreme Court of NSW, Matrimonial Causes Division; NRS-13495, Divorce and matrimonial cause case papers, 1873-1987, NRS-13495-21-338-4105/1952, Divorce Papers Agnes Patricia Bialoguski – Michael Bialoguski, 1952-1957. 11 NAA:A6119, 2648, ‘Doctor Michael Bialoguski – Miscellaneous Papers – Volume 2’: Note for File by J.M. Gilmour, 19 December 1962; DDG Ops for B2 Branch, ASIO HQ, Dr. Michael Bialoguski, 30 October 1964. 12 NAA:A6119, 2646: Newspaper clippings, “‘Amateur’ Conductor's Success,” Daily Telegraph, 30 April 1969, and “Doctor Pays £2,500 to conduct,” The Times, 29 April 1969. 13 NAA:A6119, 2646: G. R. Richards to ASIO HQ, Michael Bialoguski, 2 November 1965. 14 Michael Thwaites to Dr. M.B. Bialoguski, 1984, in Michael Bialoguski Diaries 1953-1984, NLA MS 7748. 15 Except for the Thwaites incident, that is, and once serendipitously running into Ron Richards at Australia House in London. See: NAA:A6119, 2646. 247

encounter with the real-life Soviet Union, and perhaps Stashevska was too.16 Of Juris Pintans, the

Latvian repatriate, we know significantly more. As outlined in Chapter Four, Juris’ outspoken criticisms of the Soviet system and its trade unions landed him in a Special Psychiatric Hospital in

1962. After a year of forced treatment, he was released to his family in Riga and, understandably, commenced a quieter life where his politics were either subdued or discarded. Neither he, nor

Marta, ever got exit visas to leave for West Germany and appear to have kept their heads down, living long lives in Latvia.17 He must have adapted, accommodating Soviet conditions in his work and home lives – though, based on his earlier life, one imagines that he had the occasional grumble.

Juris did witness the fall of the Soviet imperialism he despised, and would have been granted

Latvian citizenship in 1991, officially gaining the identity which he had stubbornly insisted was his right in a Soviet courtroom thirty years earlier.

Others did not make it quite so far. Boris Binetsky, China Russian theatre man, remained involved with the Russian Social Club, but his activities were cut short by his death in 1960. He had remained involved throughout the Petrov Affair, despite being interviewed in connection with the Royal Commission, and even became club president once again in 1958.18 Boris never applied for naturalisation, continuing to keep his options open and perhaps, his identity intact. Assumedly his activity would have continued were it not for his death, but his family – his wife Ekaterina, and children: Lydia, George, and Igor – applied for naturalisation almost immediately and did not take up Boris’ mantle.19 They lived out the rest of their lives outside ASIO’s gaze, as Russian-

Australians.

16 On Koschevska, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War Story of Migration to Australia (Forthcoming with Black Inc., April 2021). 17 Latvian digitised cemetery records show a Juris (d. 2008) and Marta Pintans (d. 2007) buried alongside their children Monika Pintans (d. 1971) and Ligonis Pintans (d. 2007), in Rīgas II Meža kapi, see Cemety Records, accessed 3 November 2020: https://www.cemety.lv/public/deceaseds/1322995?type=deceased. 18 NAA:A6126, 1414, ‘BINETSKY, Boris Nicholas’: Report No. 13910, Russian Social Club, 13 March 1956; File Note, BINETSKY Boris, 27 May 1959. 19 NAA:A6126, 1414: DG ASIO to RD NSW, BINETSKY George Boris, Applicant for Naturalisation, 11 November 1960. 248

Jacob Horowitz, the Polish-Jewish former communist, similarly lived only a few years past his last major run-in with ASIO. He was removed from the Special Index of Aliens in 1969, after he was finally naturalised. Jacob spent only three years as an Australian citizen before the heart condition caught up with him in 1972.20 One imagines he was less active during these years, due to his health, though he likely continued to engage with the Jewish community. He had the chance to vote in only one NSW election and one federal election; perhaps he was none too pleased when his local seat remained a Liberal Party stronghold, along with broader Liberal victories in both elections. Though, Jacob had certainly become less pro-Soviet during the 1960s – whether ASIO believed it or not – and had he lived past 1972, perhaps he would have gone the way of his friend

Severyn Pejsachowicz and become more politically conservative.21 But whatever the development of his politics might have been, the Jewish community likely remained central to his identity as a naturalised Australian.

Sasha Dukin, friend to a litany of Soviet officials, certainly retained an active connection to his Russianness after naturalisation. He became increasingly central to the construction of

Canberra’s Russian Orthodox Church, active in an ACT Russian Society, and involved in fundraising efforts for the children of Chernobyl.22 He was also, by all reports, an upstanding member of Canberra’s broader community: an advisor on construction projects, and a Justice of the Peace who still reported for duty at the Magistrates’ Court once a fortnight into his nineties.23

But did his involvement with Soviet officials and KGB men simply end? It’s difficult to say for sure. Volume Three of Sasha’s ASIO files ends abruptly at the end of 1971, after years of consistent

20 NAA:A6119, 6325, ‘HOROWITZ, Jacob (aka Kuba) Volume 2’: DDG NSW Ops to ASIO HQ, Emergency Measures, Special Index of Aliens, Jacob Horowitz, 18 January 1969; Section Officer to P.S.O. Field Enquiries, Jacob Horowitz, 9 June 1972. 21 Pejsachowicz had been involved in communist activities in Poland and with many of the same left-wing Jewish organisations in Sydney as Horowitz but appears to have mellowed with age. His daughter recalled that when he was first naturalised he was an ALP voter but became a Liberal voter later in life. Severyn Pejsachowicz (Transcription) Unwanted Australians Series SBS, 2000, Sydney Jewish Museum Archive. 22 Vladimir Kuz’min, “Zhizn’ na sluzhbe russkoĭ Kanberry,” Edinenie, last modified 3 August 2009, https://www.unification.com.au/articles/242/; Sergeĭ Semenov, “Nagrada za sluzhenie obshchestvu,” Edinenie, last modified 1 April 2013, https://www.unification.com.au/en/articles/1703/. 23 “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry, last modified 10 September 2015, https://www.canberranovosti.com/2015/09/10/2580. 249

reporting, primarily from telephone intercepts. Potentially, ASIO just stopped monitoring his phone. But they were still tapping the Embassy’s phone and it seems odd for there to have been no community reports on him after 1971, given how many had been willing to inform on him previously. Most ASIO files trickle off into silence, rather than finishing suddenly at the end of a calendar year. Potentially, there is a Volume Four which contains material not yet in the open access period.24 In any case, he might well have become more conservative with age. It certainly seems that he redirected his energies, to some extent, toward Canberra’s Russians rather than the

Soviet Officials. His dedication to the church, late in life, would indicate some change in attitude

– indeed, he even sponsored projects to build monasteries within Russia itself, and assisted the

Greek and Serbian Orthodox Churches, too.25 It seems unlikely that his Embassy activities ended so sharply, but perhaps, as his time and energy were increasingly invested in the church affairs during the 1970s, he moved away from the Embassy and its KGB men.

Conversely, Lydia Hitrova (then Galenkovskaya, after her marriage to Oleg) moved toward the Soviet officials during the late 1970s due to her involvement with Druzhba, the Russian Social

Club’s journal. When she had arrived at the Social Club in the late 1950s, the China Russians were just beginning to predominate.26 Indeed, during the 1960s some members of the White Russian community (then based in Strathfield) began to fret about the influx of young Harbintsy, educated in the Soviet-style, who found the anti-communist club’s culture ‘completely foreign’ or gravitated toward the Social Club ‘out of sheer ignorance and indifference to politics.’27 One senses a generational divide here, perhaps not assisted by the Strathfield group’s efforts to institute sporting activities to attract the youngsters away from the Social Club’s ‘Soviet impregnated atmosphere,’

24 Volume 1 of Dukin’s ASIO files includes a memo which states that ‘ASIO is assessing further records relating to this subject,’ while noting the file numbers of all three available volumes: perhaps there is a Volume 4 which extends into the 1990s (thus surpassing the thirty year open access period) and is yet to be released. 25 “Pamiati͡ Dukina A.P.” Novosti Canberry. 26 Fitzpatrick, White Russians, Red Peril. 27 NAA:A6122, 2818, ‘Russian Social Club NSW Volume 10’: S.F.O. B2 to B2, Information Received from Sir Wilfred Kent-Hughes, Arkady Morosow, 19 March 1969; S.F.O. B2 to B2, White Russian Club, 25 March 1969. 250

when many appear to have attended for the films, dancing, and visiting Soviet performers.28 Lydia, certainly, was not persuaded to switch clubs by the offer of sports, attending the Social Club’s ballet tours, circus events, visits of artists, and Soviet holidays celebrated throughout the 1960s.29

Indeed, the club president reported that they had over 400 members on the books in the mid-

1960s.30 The decade also saw tensions and debates within the club not dissimilar from those of the

1950s. Contact between the Social Club and the Embassy resumed gradually after the Embassy was reinstated. The supply of Soviet films returned, and by the late 1960s, Vladimir Alekseev (Sasha

Dukin’s friend and likely KGB rezident) was even attending occasionally when in Sydney, though with an amount of caution.31 The late 1960s thus saw heated discussions among the committee regarding Soviet influence in the club.32 But the outcome of these debates is unclear – ASIO’s files on the Social Club finish in 1969.

In the early 1970s, the Social Club began looking toward Lidcombe, eventually purchasing land and setting up shop there in 1976. And this was potentially when they started to become less political – the atmosphere around the club was likely less polarised, at least, and perhaps then inside it, too. An article on the club in the broader Russian community’s journal, Avstraliada, emphasised its cultural activities in this era: the visits of artists, sponsorship of a Russian-language television programme, and bus trips for members.33 The contact with Soviet officials never stopped entirely, however. This was how Lydia Galenkovskaya popped back onto ASIO’s radar. But there was only a trickle of intelligence on her activities with Druzhba and the officials, and ASIO didn’t

28 NAA:A6122, 2818: S.F.O. B2 to B2, 19 March 1969. 29 “Obshchestvennye Organnizatsii: Russkii obshchestvennyi klub v Sidnee (ROK),” Avstraliada 51 (2007). 30 Michael Baiden, club president, reported to Vice Squad detectives that they had approximately 470 members when interviewed regarding the club’s activities in terms of public entertainment. NSWSA: Theatres and Public Halls Branch, NRS-15318, Files relating to licences for theatres and public halls, 1895-1992, [17/3620.1]-17/3620.1[DUP2], Russian Social Club, Sydney, 1940-1976: A.J. Mackenzie Vice Squad Detective Sergeant, to Officer in Charge of Police, No. 2 Division, Basement of Premises situated at 727-731 George Street, Sydney, 5 January 1966. 31 NAA:A6122, 2818: Intercept Report, Australia/U.S.S.R. Society Contact with Russian Social Club, 11 April 1969. 32 NAA:A6122, 2818: Report No. 2251/69, Russian Social Club, 10 February 1969. 33 “Obshchestvennye Organnizatsii,” Avstraliada. Issues of Druzhba, the Social Club’s own journal, indicate that such cultural activities, and visits from Soviet tourists, sailors, artists, and officials continued in the 1970s, too, see for example: Druzhba Issue 98, December 1973, Druzhba Issue 103, June 1974; Druzhba Issue 105, August 1974; Druzhba Issue 124, May 1976, NLA: N 947 DRU. 251

conduct any broad scale surveillance as a result of her associations. The final report in her file questioned whether the intelligence dividend was sufficient to justify ASIO continuing to translate issues of Druzhba – nothing further appeared, so perhaps they didn’t bother.34 By the mid-1980s,

Russians were probably less of a concern. Gorbachev and glasnost were on their way, and the dual loyalties of a small group of Russians putting together a Russian-language journal in a garage in

Lidcombe did not represent the threat it had once appeared to. The members still felt ASIO’s gaze though, even if it no longer lingered – when interviewed for The Canberra Times in 1985, the president, Michael Baiden, told a reporter that all the committee members ‘believe they have ASIO files.’35

The stories of these left-wing Soviet DPs and their surveillance, then, are a product of the early Cold War. It was in this broader social, cultural, and political context of suspicion, feeling potentially on the precipice of open warfare, that the Australian state considered loyalty in absolutes. The state often struggled to understand the shades of grey which permeated these migrants’ lives, as DPs took political paradigms formed in Europe or China and began to accommodate a new, Australian political culture. And perhaps it still does. Politicians are required to renounce dual citizenships – many conferred by ancestry rather than birthplace – in order to demonstrate their singular loyalty to Australia, and failure to do so is grounds for resignation and scandal. Politically-involved migrants have been subjected to ‘loyalty tests,’ asked to renounce or condemn the governments of their, or their parents’, former homelands.36 The twenty-first century

34 It is also possible that they did continue with these translations, but the files they are in are not yet within the open access period. Galenkovskaya’s ASIO file is labelled ‘Volume 1,’ which appears to be typically employed only where more than one volume exists, but no ‘Volume 2’ has yet been released. It is odd, however, that none of this material appears to have been placed on the Russian Social Club files, which presently end in 1969. NAA:A6119, 7042, ‘HITROVA, Lydia Stepanova Volume 1’: Report No. 1011, Russian Social Club Publication – “Druzhba,” 13 March 1984. 35 The same report noted that Baiden defined the club as ‘not anti-Soviet,’ and that the Lidcombe premises featured a portrait of Trotsky hanging beside a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The latter detail is intriguing, though rather incongruous. Appearing pro-Trotsky would not have been out of step with other leftist groups in Sydney, but Soviet officials still frequented the club and likely would have been completely outraged by a picture of Trotsky (who had not been rehabilitated) holding such a place in the club. “Marina, Yuri, Rimma and friends: Why Eight Russians Made Sydney Home,” The Canberra Times, 19 May 1985, 54. 36 See, for example: Naveen Razik, “‘Race-baiting McCarthyism’: Eric Abetz slammed for asking Chinese Australians to denounce Communist Party during diaspora inquiry,” SBS News, last modified 15 October 2020, 252

has seen growing political emphasis on Australian citizenship as a ‘privilege’ which requires protection.37 Thus, though this is a Cold War story, it is one which informs the present, and points to a longer history of anxiety regarding migrant loyalty.

Many migrants have some kind of dual loyalty: simultaneously oriented toward an overseas homeland, and their local community/ies. The early Cold War and its social and political emphasis on loyalty saw left-wing Soviet DPs engage in a process of negotiation and accommodation with the state. These DPs were contributors to Australia: they built industries, architecture, culture, and trade unions. But they also changed their identities and biographies, sought out like-minded communities, lied to authorities, denounced other migrants, and even reported on their friends.

And contrary to Australia’s nation building narratives, some left altogether, preferring to live elsewhere in the West or return to their homelands. Being displaced did not necessarily mean that these migrants were grateful to ‘humanitarian’ Australia for taking them in, nor that it became home for all of them. But for many, with time, it did and the balancing act became a little easier, particularly as the Cold War dimmed: then, perhaps the Australian flag could sit left of stage and the Russian tricolour to the right, and plates of pirozhki and glasses of kvass shared, without the watchful gaze of one of ASIO’s agents.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/race-baiting-mccarthyism-eric-abetz-slammed-for-asking-chinese-australians-to- denounce-communist-party-during-diaspora-inquiry. The irony in this case being that Senator Eric Abetz, who asked for such condemnations at a Senate Committee hearing, arrived in Australia himself as a child, part of a wave of skilled migration from West Germany in the early 1960s. His great-uncle was a Nazi official and convicted war criminal. 37 Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 15 June 2017, 6610 (Peter Dutton, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection), https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F321 9af20-da22-4762-b08e-ad4cf9b7009e%2F0021%22; Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Philip Ruddock, Australian Citizenship: Your Right, Your Responsibility, The National Consultation on Citizenship Final Report, Department of Home Affairs, https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/files/australian-citizenship-report.pdf. 253

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