Spying in Lesovia

Once upon a time, Canada had a code was invented by minions of Stalin’s spy service and was redolent of minor, faraway countries, but ones still worthy of intrigue. Stalin’s spies arrived in Canada in bulk as soon as the Soviet Union was invited to establish diplomatic relations in 1942, a Canadian gesture to a wartime ally and courageous anti-Nazi bulwark. The main player in Amy Knight’s book, How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies, Igor Gouzenko arrived at the Soviet consulate in Ottawa in June 1943. Gouzenko was no diplomat; his tasks were a little out of the ordinary. This junior officer in the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, spent his days in a locked room coding and decoding secret messages between Ottawa and Moscow. It was his first trip outside the Soviet Union. He would never go back.

Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa on the night of September 5, The Gouzenko defection is Canada’s biggest...