How the Cold War Began ... with British Help: The Gouzenko Affair Revisited, Labour/Le Travail Spring Issue 2017)

Dennis Molinaro

The Gouzenko Affair is referred to as the event that started the Cold War. This article draws on recently declassified documents that shed new light on Britain’s role in this affair, particularly that of the Foreign Office and the British High Commissioner to Canada. The documents reveal how the British had a major part in directing the response to Igor Gouzenko’s defection in 1945. This event revealed the need for increased counterespionage security, but it also became a spectacle that directed the public’s attention away from the British connection: specifically, the role of Alan Nunn May, a British nuclear scientist who had provided the Soviets with classified information. Instead, the public’s interest was centred on Soviet spies, communism as a subversive force, and the brewing Soviet-US conflict. These newly declassified sources demonstrate how it was the British intelligence services and the British government that went to great lengths to help focus the public’s attention in this direction. They took great pains to direct Canadian policy making, which included working to discourage Canada’s prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King from handling the affair privately with the Soviet ambassador, and were likely behind the infamous press leak to US reporter Drew Pearson that forced King to call a Royal Commission and publicize the affair. With the help of the British government and intelligence services, the Cold War began.

Dennis Molinaro

Univeristy of Toronto

Alumnus

My main research interest is on the historical use, and normalization of emergency measures and its effects on society. My recent book examines how Section 98, a copy of wartime legislation designed to curb left-wing activism, became normalized in Canadian society and how political repression and violence were key elements in Canada's development into a nation. I look at key trials of the period and the political deportations that immigrants faced because of Section 98. My current project is an edited collection examining counter-intelligence in the Cold War with contributions from researchers in all the Five Eyes nations. Future research will take a revised look at the early Cold War and the formation of the Five Eyes intelligence community. The research makes use of newly declassified sources and presents a revised look at the Gouzenko Affair and the creation of modern-day surveillance.