GOUZENKO, IGOR• 215The question of exactly what motivated Gouzenko todefectre-
mains unresolved. At times, he said it was the burden of knowledge
he had accumulated, but this was not what he said inThis Was My
Choiceof what he had told the Royal Commission. According to one
transcript, in October 1945 he claimed that, ‘‘convinced that such
double-faced politics of the Soviet Government towards the demo-
cratic countries do not conform with the interests of the Russian peo-
ple and endanger the security of civilization, I decided to break away
from the Soviet regime and announce my decision openly.’’ In his
1948 autobiography, Gouzenko stressed the ideological nature of his
conversion: ‘‘Instead of convincing myself that doctrines instilled by
the Soviet Union were still sound, I had found my thoughts drifting
towards the democratic way of life.’’ The most likely explanation is
that Gouzenko, who was from typically Slav peasant stock, simply
wanted to improve his life and that of his family. He knew that only
austerity and hardship awaited him at home, whereas Canada offered
living conditions that could never be matched in the Soviet Union.
In terms of the damage Gouzenko inflicted, his testimony and the
evidence of his stolen files probably did more than any other single
event to alert the West to the nature and scale of the espionage offen-
sive waged by the Kremlin. Apart from the dozen or so defendants
convicted of spying, Gouzenko wrecked an organization that had
taken years to develop, exposed the penetration of the atomic weap-
ons Manhattan Project, and demonstrated the very close relationship
between the Canadian Communist party and Moscow.
Surprisingly, although Gouzenko’s subsequent whereabouts in
Canada were something of an open secret, no attempt on his life was
ever uncovered and, despite the dangers, he frequently courted pub-
licity. In 1955, for example, he volunteered testimony to the U.S.
Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Gouzenko was provided with the
identity of a Canadian of Ukrainian extraction who had been born
near Saskatoon in Saskatchewan and lived off his royalties and a gen-
erous government pension. He died at his home outside Toronto in
June 1982, blinded by a combination of diabetes and alcohol and em-
bittered that his literary merits, which he regarded as on a par with
Tolstoy, had gone largely unrecognized by anyone apart from his
loyal wife and children.
A fictionalized account of Gouzenko’s defection, entitledThe Net-