The dramatic 1954 Darwin Airport international incident which saw police manhandle armed Russian guards attempting to hustle Mrs Evdokia Petrov , wife of a defecting Russian diplomat, out of the country has been resurrected by the recent death of distinguished Australian public servant and academic, John Burton .
The Petrov Affair was mentioned in the replay of a Burton interview by Phillip Adams in the excellent ABC Late Night Live classic interviews series.
Burton emphatically stated he felt the Petrov Affair, which included a Royal Commission, had been a political stunt to damage Labor. [ It came to light three weeks before a Federal election at a time when it was felt the Menzies government would be voted out and it would have to, as one newspaper putit , pull a rabbit out of a hat not to be swept from office ; Menzies was re-elected . ]
Burton said Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy, Canberra, had been playing up all the time and it was quite reasonable for the Russian ambassador to want to send him back to Russia . In the case of his wife, she was quite different, and the couple were not getting on well at the time. Her husband had defected and she, escorted by two guards, had been dragged aboard a BOAC flight plane to be taken back to Russia. There were extraordinary scenes at Sydney airport when an angry crowd , many of them European migrants, invaded the tarmac and attempted to prevent the guards from taking the distraught Mrs Petrov aboard the flight.
In Darwin , a deadlock was put on one guard , and they were relieved of their weapons. Mrs Petrov sought asylum and was taken to Government House.
Her husband had been able to make contact with the Defence Department and brought with him a document, which Burton suspected Colonel Charles Spry of ASIO had drafted . “ Petrov could not have drafted it as his English was impossible” he told Adams.[ It was subsequently revealed that Vladimir Petrov had been paid 5000 pound on defecting and promised a similar amount if the document he supplied ASIO warranted it]. That document , said Burton , dealing with many issues, gave the impression that Prime Minister Menzies was going to rescue all of Australia from subversive elements . No one would ever know the truth, he continued but he felt there was strong evidence that it was “ just a political stunt. ”
(An eyewitness account of the Darwin rescue of Mrs Petrov , written by New Zealand journalist and author , Ross Annabell, a former editor of the NT News , was recently published in the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society journal, Citation. It consisted of the actual story he filed covering the event.)
Burton , the head of the External Affairs Department , also had another important link with Darwin. He was involved in the Federal government’s move to establish another newspaper in Darwin other than the union owned and run Northern Standard , regarded as a communist publication, which eventually led to the birth of the NT News. PM Ben Chifley , said to be obsessive about communists, is thought to have originated the idea for a new Darwin paper . In 1948 Burton raised the issue with political reporter Don Whitington, former chief of the Canberra bureau of the Frank Packer owned Consolidated Press, who had close contact with the ALP.
When the Chifley government was voted out, Canberra lost interest in the newspaper proposal. However, it was later renewed and the conservatives arranged for the old tin bank in Smith Street to be made available to Whitington and Eric White , head of a leading PR firm , who had a strong connection to PM Robert Menzies , for the new paper.
Burton died at the age of 95 . During his time he worked round the clock during WW11 in Canberra , was closely involved with the workaholic, demanding and suspicious Doctor Evatt , including the period in which he played a big role in setting up the UN , contributed behind the scenes to the eventual settlement of the Indonesian Konfrontasi with Malaysia and Singapore , pioneered the study of conflict resolution now taught in many universities, and was a contemporary of other influential public servants such as " Nugget" Coombs and Roland Wilson .
Believing in the postwar welfare state set up by Atlee in Britain ,which Curtin and Chifley pushed here, he unsuccessfully stood as a Labor candidate in the federal seat of Lowe, which was won by William McMahon, later to become PM. Burton upset Labor by leading a delegation to a peace conference in China and claimed the US had used chemical weapons in Korea. Interestingly, he opposed the Indonesian takeover of West Papua from the Dutch .
The Petrov Affair was mentioned in the replay of a Burton interview by Phillip Adams in the excellent ABC Late Night Live classic interviews series.
Burton emphatically stated he felt the Petrov Affair, which included a Royal Commission, had been a political stunt to damage Labor. [ It came to light three weeks before a Federal election at a time when it was felt the Menzies government would be voted out and it would have to, as one newspaper putit , pull a rabbit out of a hat not to be swept from office ; Menzies was re-elected . ]
Burton said Vladimir Petrov, Third Secretary at the Russian Embassy, Canberra, had been playing up all the time and it was quite reasonable for the Russian ambassador to want to send him back to Russia . In the case of his wife, she was quite different, and the couple were not getting on well at the time. Her husband had defected and she, escorted by two guards, had been dragged aboard a BOAC flight plane to be taken back to Russia. There were extraordinary scenes at Sydney airport when an angry crowd , many of them European migrants, invaded the tarmac and attempted to prevent the guards from taking the distraught Mrs Petrov aboard the flight.
In Darwin , a deadlock was put on one guard , and they were relieved of their weapons. Mrs Petrov sought asylum and was taken to Government House.
Her husband had been able to make contact with the Defence Department and brought with him a document, which Burton suspected Colonel Charles Spry of ASIO had drafted . “ Petrov could not have drafted it as his English was impossible” he told Adams.[ It was subsequently revealed that Vladimir Petrov had been paid 5000 pound on defecting and promised a similar amount if the document he supplied ASIO warranted it]. That document , said Burton , dealing with many issues, gave the impression that Prime Minister Menzies was going to rescue all of Australia from subversive elements . No one would ever know the truth, he continued but he felt there was strong evidence that it was “ just a political stunt. ”
(An eyewitness account of the Darwin rescue of Mrs Petrov , written by New Zealand journalist and author , Ross Annabell, a former editor of the NT News , was recently published in the Northern Territory Police Museum and Historical Society journal, Citation. It consisted of the actual story he filed covering the event.)
Burton , the head of the External Affairs Department , also had another important link with Darwin. He was involved in the Federal government’s move to establish another newspaper in Darwin other than the union owned and run Northern Standard , regarded as a communist publication, which eventually led to the birth of the NT News. PM Ben Chifley , said to be obsessive about communists, is thought to have originated the idea for a new Darwin paper . In 1948 Burton raised the issue with political reporter Don Whitington, former chief of the Canberra bureau of the Frank Packer owned Consolidated Press, who had close contact with the ALP.
When the Chifley government was voted out, Canberra lost interest in the newspaper proposal. However, it was later renewed and the conservatives arranged for the old tin bank in Smith Street to be made available to Whitington and Eric White , head of a leading PR firm , who had a strong connection to PM Robert Menzies , for the new paper.
Burton died at the age of 95 . During his time he worked round the clock during WW11 in Canberra , was closely involved with the workaholic, demanding and suspicious Doctor Evatt , including the period in which he played a big role in setting up the UN , contributed behind the scenes to the eventual settlement of the Indonesian Konfrontasi with Malaysia and Singapore , pioneered the study of conflict resolution now taught in many universities, and was a contemporary of other influential public servants such as " Nugget" Coombs and Roland Wilson .
Believing in the postwar welfare state set up by Atlee in Britain ,which Curtin and Chifley pushed here, he unsuccessfully stood as a Labor candidate in the federal seat of Lowe, which was won by William McMahon, later to become PM. Burton upset Labor by leading a delegation to a peace conference in China and claimed the US had used chemical weapons in Korea. Interestingly, he opposed the Indonesian takeover of West Papua from the Dutch .
