{"id":10940,"date":"2011-08-31T09:28:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T13:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10940"},"modified":"2011-08-31T10:33:42","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T14:33:42","slug":"the-official-start-of-the-cold-war-5-september-1945","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/31\/the-official-start-of-the-cold-war-5-september-1945\/","title":{"rendered":"The “official” start of the Cold War: 5 September, 1945"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Jonas<\/a>, in a review of Mark Steyn’s latest book, gives a thumbnail sketch of the real trigger event that started the Cold War:<\/p>\n

\n

Sixty-six years earlier, another writer put together a manuscript of sorts to let Western readers know they were headed for hell in a hand-basket. He wasn\u2019t in Steyn\u2019s league as a wordsmith, although he did write a non-fiction bestseller and win a Governor General\u2019s Award for a novel called The Fall Of A Titan<\/em>. But far from making the apocalypse amusing, Igor Gouzenko could make a slapstick comedy apocalyptic. No two writers were less alike, yet their work carried a similar message.<\/p>\n

The Cold War began on a Wednesday, a few minutes after 8 p.m., on September 5, 1945. This was when a young, slight, nondescript man closed the door of an embassy building on Charlotte Street and walked out into the humid Ottawa evening. He looked a little bulky for a reason. He carried 109 documents under his shirt.<\/p>\n

During August, 1945, while the atomic bombs were exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gouzenko had been discussing his defection with his wife Svetlana in their small apartment on Somerset Street. As a cipher clerk, Gouzenko knew a great deal about a Soviet spy ring operating through the office of GRU (military intelligence) Colonel Nikolai Zabotin. The aim of Zabotin\u2019s spy ring was to secure atomic secrets. Gouzenko\u2019s tour of duty in Ottawa was ending, and he feared that being privy to such information would reduce his chances of survival in Moscow. In self-defence, he triggered the Cold War.<\/p>\n

The thing was damn hard to trigger. When it came to international intrigue, Canadians were wet behind the ears. Having just concluded a victorious war, they resisted the idea that they were at war again, this time with their former comrades-in-arms. Gouzenko knew that his tale might sound far-fetched, and carried documents with him for proof.<\/p>\n

For two harrowing days, with his pregnant wife and their two-year-old son in tow, Gouzenko tried to convince incredulous Canadian journalists and Ministry of Justice officials that he was worthy of a hearing. Mackenzie King\u2019s government couldn\u2019t make up its mind about the defectors, and for a brief period actually considered returning them to the Soviets. Messengers bring bad tidings at their peril.<\/p>\n

Gouzenko didn\u2019t start the Cold War; he just warned us to do something, or get ready for Armageddon. So we did something, but 66 years later we\u2019ve another Cassandra at the doorstep, telling us it wasn\u2019t enough. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Jonas, in a review of Mark Steyn’s latest book, gives a thumbnail sketch of the real trigger event that started the Cold War: Sixty-six years earlier, another writer put together a manuscript of sorts to let Western readers know they were headed for hell in a hand-basket. He wasn\u2019t in Steyn\u2019s league as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,7,10],"tags":[108,476,433],"class_list":["post-10940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-history","category-liberty","tag-coldwar","tag-espionage","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Qs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10941,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10940\/revisions\/10941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}