Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko was a cipher clerk for the Soviet embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, and a lieutenant of the GRU.
29 Facts About Igor Gouzenko
2.
Igor Gouzenko defected on September 5,1945, three days after the end of World War II, with 109 documents on the USSR's espionage activities in the West.
3.
Igor Gouzenko was born on January 26,1919, in the village of Rogachev near Dmitrov, Moscow Governorate, 100 kilometers north-west of Moscow.
4.
Igor Gouzenko was of Ukrainian heritage, the youngest of four children.
5.
Igor Gouzenko's older brother, born in 1917, died at one year old from malnutrition.
6.
Igor Gouzenko's father fought in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Bolsheviks, dying early of typhoid.
7.
Igor Gouzenko entered the fifth grade in the school named after Maxim Gorky near the Automotive Factory No 2 Zavod Imeni Stalina.
8.
Igor Gouzenko spent a lot of time in the Lenin Library, where he prepared for admission to the university and then entered the Moscow Architectural Institute.
9.
Igor Gouzenko served in the central apparatus of the GRU.
10.
Igor Gouzenko's position gave him knowledge of Soviet espionage activities in the West.
11.
In June 1943 Igor Gouzenko arrived in Ottawa, Canada to work at the Soviet Embassy, his first overseas mission.
12.
Igor Gouzenko was allowed to live in an apartment in the city with Canadian families.
13.
In September 1944, Igor Gouzenko learned that his family had to go home to Moscow.
14.
On September 5,1945, two days after the end of World War II, the 26-year-old Igor Gouzenko walked out of the embassy carrying a briefcase with Soviet code books and decryption materials, a total of 109 documents.
15.
The next day Igor Gouzenko was able to find contacts in the RCMP who were willing to examine the documents he had removed from the Soviet embassy.
16.
Igor Gouzenko was transported by the RCMP to the secret World War II "Camp X", comfortably distant from Ottawa.
17.
Robertson told the Prime Minister that Igor Gouzenko was threatening suicide, but King was adamant that his government not get involved, even if Igor Gouzenko was apprehended by Soviet authorities.
18.
Igor Gouzenko's defection "ushered in the modern era of Canadian security intelligence".
19.
The evidence provided by Igor Gouzenko led to the arrest of 39 suspects, including Agatha Chapman, whose apartment at 282 Somerset Street West was a favourite evening rendezvous; a total of 18 were eventually convicted of a variety of offences.
20.
Igor Gouzenko provided many vital leads which assisted greatly with ongoing espionage investigations in Britain and North America.
21.
Igor Gouzenko's mother died in the NKVD prison at Lubyanka under investigation.
22.
Igor Gouzenko always assumed that his sister Irina, who worked as an architect, died as a result of his defection.
23.
Igor Gouzenko, as assigned by the Canadian government, lived the rest of his life under the assumed name of George Brown.
24.
Igor Gouzenko's children thought the language their parents spoke at home was Czech and supported Czechoslovakia in hockey games.
25.
Igor Gouzenko was involved in a defamation case against Maclean's for a libellous article written about him.
26.
Igor Gouzenko remained in the public eye, writing two books, This Was My Choice, a non-fiction account of his defection, and the novel The Fall of a Titan, which won a Governor General's Award in 1954.
27.
Igor Gouzenko appeared on television to promote his books and air grievances with the RCMP, always with a hood over his head.
28.
Igor Gouzenko died of a heart attack in 1982 in Mississauga.
29.
Igor Gouzenko's grave was unmarked until 2002, when family members erected a headstone.