Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov (15 February, 1907 - 14 June, 1991) was a member of the Soviet Union's clandestine services who became famous in 1954 for his defection to Australia.

Early life

He was born Afanasy Shorokhov, into a peasant family in the village of Larikha, in central Siberia.

He joined the Komsomol in 1923, using his Communist Party affiliation to gain an education. Through this education he was able to do well enough on his naval recruiting tests to become specially selected for the cipher-work training course. After the two-year technical course which qualified him as a cipher specialist, he was posted to a ship in the Baltic Sea to encrypt and decrypt the secret signals.

Joining OGPU

He decided to join the Soviet spy organization, the OGPU, in May of 1933. He was subsequently admitted to the Special Cipher Section, which was attached to the Foreign Department of the OGPU. It was his status in this section which allowed him to learn many Soviet secrets by reading the top secret ciphers.

Petrov miraculously survived the purges of Stalin under Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria. Even though he saw and heard of the great of number of his friends, colleagues, superiors, and famous revolutionary characters who were being arrested and executed, Petrov escaped unscathed.

Australia and defection

Having graduated from cipher clerk to full-fledged agent, Petrov was sent to Australia by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in 1951. His job there was to recruit spies and to keep watch on Soviet citizens, making sure that none of the Soviets abroad defected. Ironically, it was in Australia where the fateful events would occur, which led up to his defection from the USSR.

Vladimir Petrov applied for political asylum in 1954, on the grounds that he could provide information regarding a Soviet spy ring operating out of the Soviet Embassy in Australia.

Petrov states in his memoirs (ghost written by Michael Thwaites) that his reasoning for defecting lay not in an imminent fear of being executed, but in his disillusionment with the Soviet system and his own experiences and inside knowledge of the terror and human suffering inflicted on the Soviet people by their government. He was there to witness the destruction of the Siberian village in which he was born, caused by forced collectivization and the famine which resulted. He remembered the blacksmith who taught him of the virtues of Communism and who also got him started in his education. This blacksmith was labeled a kulak and forcibly deported with his entire family, probably to die. Petrov learned the true excesses behind the Great Purges while decrypting signals which set quotas for the murder of citizens.

Life after Defection

Petrov became an Australian citizen in 1956. His and Evdokia's names were changed to Sven and Maria Allyson. They lived a quiet suburban life in Melbourne. He died in 1991, and she died in 2002.

The whereabouts of the Petrovs was still the subject of a D Notice in 1982.

External links

• More information on defection and later life

References

• Petrov, Vladimir & Evdokia (1956). Empire of Fear. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. NO ISBN.