Shugar family seeks apology
“Thus the spy scandal was certainly exploited — and even largely created — for reasons which were plainly political.”
When Gouzenko’s sensational revelations came out, “the whole atmosphere changed,” said Amy Knight, author of How the Cold War Began: The Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies (McClelland and Stewart, 2005).
“I think both the Canadian and the U.S. government started to look at things in black and white,” she said.
SUSPECTS LUMPED TOGETHER
In the hysteria that followed, the lines between committing espionage, fraternizing with Russians and holding communist views were blurred, Knight said.
“I think what the Canadian government did was, in the frenzy that arose after Gouzenko defected and they found out about the spying, they didn’t look back. They should have been aware of the nuances of the relationship of these left-wing people with the Soviets. In other words, they wanted to just lump everybody together. That did great harm,” she said.
While it is true that some of those implicated in the espionage case were naive idealists who were cynically exploited by the Russians, the Soviet Union gained little of value, Knight said.
Much of the information funned through the embassy was easily available, she said.
“My conclusion was that the only person who really passed anything that was detrimental to the security interests of Canada, the U.S. and Britain, vis-à-vis the Soviets, was Alan Nunn May, the British scientist,” she added.
The “atom spy” Nunn May supplied small samples of the isotopes Uranium-233 and 235 to the Russians. The courier who carried them to Russia under his clothes developed painful lesions and would need blood transfusions for the rest of his life.
In the case of Shugar, referred to in documents supplied by Gouzenko by the code name “Prometheus,” there is no evidence he ever passed information to the Soviets, Knight said.
“He was on their wish list,” she said.
Of the 39 people arrested, 18 were convicted, mostly on the strength of confessions police would have been unlikely to get under peacetime conditions — even though the war was, in fact, over.
“Basically, the only charges they got to stick were based on the selfincrimination they had given. The evidence really wasn’t there,” Whitaker said.
Tagged as a communist in Canada, Shugar refused to join the Communist Party once in Poland.
“He was too left-wing for Canada. He was too right-wing for the Polish government,” said Ross Lambertson, author of Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (University of Toronto Press, 2004). “And that meant that he never received as many perks as he would have if he’d been a member of the party.”
LESSONS FROM THE PAST
Today, Shugar says he has little faith in any political system.
“I haven’t been tied to any particular movement or party ever and actually at the present time I find politics sort of disagreeable. I don’t feel very optimistic about the future of the present world,” he said.
“As I frequently mention, the worst animals on earth are the human ones. There is no other animal that does so much cruelty and killing as the human being.”
Lambertson said that while he fervently hopes Shugar will get an apology from Canada, he is not optimistic.
“I’d like them to say, ‘ We’ve looked at the evidence and we’ve come to the conclusion that this man was badly treated,’ ” he said.
But with the Conservative government planning a $5.3 million memorial to victims of communism near the Supreme Court in Ottawa, the current political climate is not conducive to questioning the excesses of the Cold War.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office did not return a call and email message requesting a response to the Shugar family’s request.
The debate over the rights of those accused in the Gouzenko Affair also has resonance as the government studies controversial proposed anti-terror law, Bill C-51, which some legal experts warn could stifle dissent and blur the line between national security and police powers.
“The lesson is that governments in times of fear often go too far. There are some similarities between what we’re doing for suspected Muslim fundamentalists or Muslim terrorists today and the communists then,” Lambertson said.
There are striking parallels between the Red Scares of the Cold War and the current war on terror, Knight said.
“There is a relevance because I think that when there’s a threat, all of a sudden, things just change,” she said.
“It continues to be an issue of threats to national security vs. individual rights. And that’s what it really boils down to.”
Intermarriage was not a common event. David came from a very orthodox and religious family and, of course, Grace was not Jewish. There was a very great bond between them.
David Roback, Grace’s nephew