Petrov Affair

The Petrov Affair is an event of Australian history. In 1954, the Russian diplomat Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov asked for political asylum in Australia on the grounds that he had information about a Soviet spy ring was operating from the Russian Embassy in Australia out. The Russians demanded that Petrov's wife was to return to Russia. A large public outcry was the result when it was plugged in at the airport in Sydney with violence in an airplane. The crowd was angry because she believed that she was kidnapped by Soviet guards in her native Russia. When the plane in Darwin lodged a stopover, it turned out that the guards were armed. Ms. Petrova was soon granted political asylum.

This happened at the height of the Cold War. The growing fear of communism in Australia meant that this event was presented extremely startling by the media. Petrov and his wife were Soviet spies who had been converted by the Australian way of life to capitalism.

The then Prime Minister Robert Menzies used this affair as evidence that the threat of communism was real and not exaggerated. Due to the Petrov affair Menzies won the next election, the Australian Labor Party fell into disagreements that led to the fact that the Democratic Labor Party split from the mother party. The DLP was much anti-communist and pro- Catholic.

The Australians have the Petrov affair than their own exciting Soviet spy story that is almost a reversal of the Rosenberg scenarios in good memory.

In spring 2005 an exhibition on the Petrov affair took place in the Old Parliament House in Canberra instead (Australia ), which documented in detail the incident. Petrov and his wife were given new identities and lived as Australian citizens in Melbourne. He died in 1991 at the age of 84 years and in 1988 with 88 years.