Authors

Discussion

Historians have traditionally been dismissive of the relationship between Australia and the Soviet Union. The two countries, conventional wisdom has it, simply did not appear on one another’s radar. But these observations have typically been made a priori, without reference to the relevant archival sources. In fact, the few small scale archival studies which do exist have revealed a more nuanced history of diplomacy and security between a world superpower and a regional middle power. A larger scale project re-thinking this understudied bilateral relationship is therefore logical.

Using predominantly new archival materials and oral history interviews, this paper makes a case study of two espionage scandals which rocked Australian-Soviet relations in 1963. Respectively, these were the so-called ‘Skripov Affair’, the expulsion of KGB agent Ivan Skripov from Canberra, and the consequent ‘Morrison Affair’, the tit-for-tat retaliation against Australian diplomat Bill Morrison. Relations between Moscow and Canberra had only recently been restored in 1959 following their temporary cessation in 1954, a result of another spy scandal known as the Petrov Affair. And now, less than a decade later, the relationship was again beset by spy scandals. There seemed to be no end to Moscow’s belligerence and contempt for its diplomatic relationship with Canberra.

And yet, these incidents came at the expense of Moscow’s own diplomatic charm offensive against Australia, waged by Soviet diplomats and dignitaries across the globe wherever their Australian counterparts could be found. With these two scandals, Moscow’s attempted ‘honeymoon’ (as the Australians dubbed it) with Canberra was dead in the water. Had this charm offensive simply been a cynical diplomatic cover all along, a means for the KGB to make back lost ground in Australia? Or, was there something else at play involving institutional plurality in the Soviet system and its bureaucracy? And what exactly were Moscow’s interests in this distant outpost of Western imperialism? This paper seeks to make sense of such questions and the implications these two scandals have for our understanding of both Australian-Soviet relations and, more broadly, the Cold War and the nature of the Soviet system.