The Defector’s Missing Shoe.
The dramatic Cold War defection of the most senior Russian Spy to date.
In April 1954, in the middle of the Cold War, Soviet spy Vladimir Petrov defected in Australia. After the death of Stalin in 1953 and following it the fall (and execution) of Lavrentiy Beria, his infamous security chief and architect of the dictator’s purges, many Russian intelligence officials were left fearful of the future. Petrov was one such spy who suspected his boss at the Embassy in Australia, in a move to protect himself, had denounced him to Moscow as a ‘Beria loyalist’, leaving Vladimir with an uncertain future, especially if recalled to Russia.
But this is not the story of Vladimir Petrov, it is the story of his wife, Evdokia Petrova, also a Russian intelligence operative like her husband. But unlike her drunken, whoring, ignorant and coarse spouse, Evdokia, a cypher clerk stationed like him at the embassy in Australia, was a charming, articulate and above all intelligent Soviet officer. Abandoned when Vladimir sought asylum in exchange for information for the Australian security services, Petrova was facing recall to Moscow to answer for her husband’s crimes and in mortal danger as a result. When Moscow demanded her return, she was escorted by two burly Russian ‘minders’ to the airport, bound for the Soviet Union. She was faced with a stark choice: accompany the Russian henchmen or seek an alternative should the chance arise. At a refuelling stop at Darwin airport, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) provided just such an opportunity. The next day Evdokia’s story, and photograph minus a shoe, was in the international spotlight and on the front pages of newspapers around the world. In the event, she proved the more valuable to ASIO and MI5.
Evdokia Petrova with her Soviet ‘minders’ and missing shoe. [credit]
Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia arrived for their second overseas posting and secret spying mission on board the liner Orcades in February 1951 as it sailed into Sydney harbour, having previously worked together for Soviet intelligence at their embassy in Stockholm from 1943 to 1947.
But their overseas mission in Australia went badly from the start and by 1954 it was doomed. Hard drinking Vladimir was on poor terms with his colleagues at the embassy and Evdokia had fallen out with the wife of the Soviet Ambassador, a dispute hard to conceal in the small community of Russian officials in the Australian capital.
Worse than that, Vladimir’s frequent visits to the bars and brothels of Canberra brought him to the attention of ASIO as a potential target for recruitment. When Stalin’s security chief Beria was tried and executed for his crimes in December 1953, Petrov could see the writing on the wall and planned his defection. However, he made no such plans for his beleaguered wife, leaving her to face the music, for what at the time would be the unprecedented defection of the highest ranking Soviet spy in history. Later Vladimir Petrov explained to his ASIO interrogators the reasons behind his defection:
“I consider it important to make the observation that my intention to settle for life in Australia was born in 1952 at the time when I and my wife began to be persecuted and hounded by Ambassador LIFANOV, the Party Organiser KOVALEV and others…”
On Friday 2nd April 1954 Vladimir Petrov flew the 180 or so miles from Canberra to Sydney. Petrov had been traveling there regularly in his overt role as Third Secretary and in his covert role as acting Rezident, the chief spy at the embassy. But this time the trip was very different. Vladimir Petrov was traveling specifically to meet Bob Wake, the Deputy Director of ASIO. By the afternoon of that Friday, Petrov was securely settled in an ASIO safehouse in the Sydney suburb of Darlington. The Russian spy had come bearing gifts; he had brought with him a trove of extremely valuable secret documents stolen from a safe at the Soviet embassy.
In the weeks following Petrov’s defection, the atmosphere among the Soviet intelligence and diplomatic community in Canberra was nearing panic. For ten days intelligence officers at the embassy, and their masters at Moscow Centre, received no word from Vladimir Petrov. As a form of insurance, and to maintain some leverage over Petrov if it turned out he had in fact defected, Evdokia was ordered to move from the Petrov’s home, in the leafy Canberra suburb of Forrest, into the embassy compound. Here Soviet minders could keep a closer eye on her. Evdokia must by now have feared the worst. She knew her husband’s defection had put her and her family back in Russia in immediate danger and that was what worried her most.
Moscow’s worst fears were confirmed on the 13th of April 1954, when the Australian Government informed the Soviet Ambassador in Canberra that Soviet Third Secretary, Vladimir Petrov, had sought political asylum. Petrov had become the first Soviet overseas Rezident to defect, sending shockwaves through Soviet intelligence circles and Communist Party leadership.
The announcement set in motion a series of events that led to dramatic scenes at Darwin Airport and to one of the most enduring images of the Cold War as Evdokia, in the glare of the world’s media, was manhandled by her burly Soviet ‘guards’ towards a plane to begin her journey back to the Soviet Union. Petrova appeared visibly upset as she negotiated the airport, having to run the gauntlet of a large group of animated anti-Soviet protesters who had gathered there. Evdokia lost one of her shoes in the pushing and shoving through the crowds to get on the plane.
A kind air-stewardess on the BOAC Lockheed Constellation aircraft she boarded, Miss Joyce Bull, lent Evdokia a pair of shoes. Once aboard, aircrew who spoke to Petrova became increasingly worried if she was leaving Australia of her own free will. During these conversations Evdokia revealed that the Soviet guards escorting her were armed. As it was an offense to carry firearms on commercial flights in Australian airspace at the time, the crew followed procedure and alerted the pilot, Captain Davys. He then passed this information on by radio to the authorities, with the message quickly reaching ASIO Director General Spry.
By the time the aircraft carrying Evdokia stopped to refuel in Darwin, the Airport’s Acting Administrator in company with the Australian Police ordered all the passengers off the plane. Petrova’s two Soviet guards, named Zharkov and Karpinsky, were approached and quickly disarmed by two Northern Territory Police officers as they disembarked from the aircraft.
More importantly Evdokia was encouraged to take the opportunity presented by the stop-over at Darwin airport and the disarming of her Soviet guards to telephone her husband, who ASIO officers had arranged to be waiting by the telephone at the safehouse where he was being hidden.
Vladimir explained on the phone to his wife that even her return to Moscow would not provide a guarantee of safety for her sister or other family members, and the only way to ensure her own safety was to join him in defecting. Soon after the conversation with her husband Evdokia made a request to the officials present for political asylum in Australia. Her irreversible decision had been made.
In time Evdokia’s defection proved of significant intelligence value to ASIO and MI5. In addition to the useful information she gave to ASIO about what she knew about Soviet intelligence activity in Australia, she also provided highly valuable intelligence to MI5 about Russian spies in Britain, identifying scores of Soviet intelligence officers from photographs of Soviet diplomats and officials working in Britain shown to her by MI5. Her memory for people, events and places was far superior to her husband.
The Soviets now reacted to the confirmed defections of the most senior intelligence officer they had so far lost in the Cold War and his wife by cutting diplomatic relations and closing the Soviet embassy in Canberra. More sinisterly the Soviet intelligence services also hatched plans for the assassination of both their former Rezident and his wife, desperate to stop them talking to ASIO and MI5, and eager to set an example to others of the consequences of betraying the Soviet Union. Although schemes to assassinate the Petrov’s were considered by the Soviets for some years, from available sources they do not appear to have moved much beyond the planning stage.
MI5 files reveal that Evdokia was a first-rate intelligence officer in comparison to her husband, despite his more senior rank. One of MI5’s Security Liaison Officers in Australia, Derek Hamblen, was in little doubt that Evdokia Petrova was of far greater importance to the UK Security Service after her defection than her spouse. Hamblen reported to London that Vladimir Petrov was “vague and erratic”, where as his wife “has a much tidier mind and can be left to some extent to put her ideas on paper”.
History would show that the Petrov’s already strained marriage did not last long after their defection, but there was to be, in time, a happy ending for Evdokia. In 1956 Vladimir and Evdokia became Australian citizens. They quietly lived out their lives there under the assumed names Sven and Maria Anna Allyson, protected from media attention by a D-notice ‘gagging order’. Evdokia Petrova outlived her husband by seventeen years, eventually passing away in 2002, aged 88. Although their marriage had failed, Evdokia found happiness when her beloved sister escaped Russia and joined her in Australia.
In the 1990s Robert Manne conducted a series of interviews with Petrova for the National Library of Australia, and in his 2002 obituary of the famous defector for Australia’s The Age newspaper he fittingly described one of ASIO and MI5’s most valuable prizes of the Cold War thus:
“She was bright, vivacious, courteous and kind... She was also sustained by the love of her sister, who settled near her in suburban Melbourne. There was something very fitting about their closeness at the end: anxiety about her sister’s welfare was uppermost in Evdokia’s mind during the dramatic days of her defection almost 50 years earlier.”
This story is partly extracted from my non-fiction Kindle/eBook ‘Agent ZEMLIAK - The Spy Who Stayed in the Cold’ (Smashwords, 2015), which can be downloaded free at: [Smashwords]
Also published this month are the Kindle/eBook editions of my latest spy novel, ‘Volodymyr’s Tears’, which can be found on Amazon at:
Amazon.com [Volodymyr’s Tears]
Amazon.co.uk [Volodymyr’s Tears]