same time, credit for "realigning hundreds of pages" and for "rewriting" the book is given to Andy O'Brien, a sports writer on the Montreal Standard. Andy O'Brien assures us that the mind of Gouzenko is "razor-keen". In spite of this praise, it is doubtful whether any substantial part of the book was actually written by Gouzenko himself. He put his name to it and he draws the royalties. Someone else did the work. The book is curiously vague on dates and places in the U.S.S.R. and the sequence of events is sometimes impossible to establish, but here is Couzenko's background, so far as it can be worked out. He was born in the U.S.S.R. in 1919. His father was in the Red Army and was killed in action when Gouzenko was a baby. His mother was a teacher. He went through school and then began to study architecture. Most of his schooling was in Moscow. After a year or two at the Architectural School he was called into the Army and was sent to a Military Academy where he spent the first year of the war (1941-42) on a course in ciphering. He graduated to a job as cipher clerk at Intelligence Headquarters in Moscow. After a year there he was sent to Canada in June, 1943. He was then 24 years old. He had been married in 1942. In midsummer, 1944, while he was working with the Soviet Military Attache in Ottawa, recall to Moscow was mentioned. He then made up his mind to quit rather than go back to the U.S.S.R. and possible front line service. However, official plans changed, the recall didn't come through, and he stayed on "reluctantly" for another year. In fact he stayed on until recall was final and irrevocable. If he had not been recalled, presumably he would still be working away in the office of the Military Attache, drawing his pay and swallowing his scruples. He was recalled, so he ran away. Since Sept., 1945, nearly three years ago, Gouzenko has been living in seclusion, under guard by the R.C.M.P. Anyone who wants to see him has to arrange for an interview through official government channels. His opportunities for learning much about Canada have been strictly limited. It is clear from the book that he knew little enough about his own country when he left there. Gouzenko gives himself away when he tries to give an eye-witness, first-hand account of events which he could not possibly have seen. Once this little failing is known, the value of the book sinks below zero. FAKE. 1 The man who wasn't there. An obvious example of this kind of faking is found in the chapter on Prisoners of War. Gouzenko gives a supposedly first-hand account of the demobilization problems of the Red Army. As an on-the-spot observer he reports on waves of arrests of unruly veterans returning to their homes, on the growth of hooliganism, on the fact that official propaganda began to dwell on the need for soldiers to be useful in neace time too. This all takes place at a "late stage in the war," and Couzenko is in Moscow, "constantly handling telegrams" on the problems of veterans. On the Moscow subway he personally talked to a drunken veteran who wanted to be told why he had fought "four" years for all this. This is a very artistic, circumstantial account of events in the U.S.S.R. But there is one little Haw to all the fake realism. The ghost-writer forgot that Gouzenko left the U.S.S.R. in June, 1943, some two years before all these events are supposed to have taken place. Demobilization was no problem in June, 1943, either in the U.S.S.R. or in Canada, or in any other allied country.
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