THE PETROV AFFAIR politics and espionage

• Main Author: Manne, Robert
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: SydneybPergamon 1987
• Subjects: Petrov, Vladimir Mikhailovich > 1907-; Petrov, Evdokia; Australian Security Intelligence Organization; Espionage, Soviet > Australia; Australia > Politics and government > 1945-
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 In April, 1954, Vladimir Petrov, head of Soviet espionage in Australia, successfully approached the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation for asylum. His defection sparked the most dramatic spy scandal in Australian history, an affair that tore at the political fabric of this country and severed Australia's diplomatic ties with Russia. This powerful mini-series, conceived by the legendary journalist Sam Lipski and written by Cliff Green (Picnic at Hanging Rock), tells how, in the midst of a hostile Cold War, Petrov and his wife (a former member of the Soviet police plucked from the hands of Russian agents in Darwin) sparked a scandalous Royal Commission, allegations of political conspiracy, and the most bitter federal election in Australian history. The Petrov Affair is an international spy story, a political story, but most of all a human story of the Petrovs themselves, disappearing into the anonymity of the Australian suburbs, forced to adopt false names and personal histories, condemned to lead the secret lives of spies in their chosen haven of freedom.