Soviet Intent at the Dawn of the Cold War: Igor Gouzenko’s Revelations About GRU Intelligence Taskings

ABSTRACT When Igor Gouzenko defected in September 1945, be brought with him a package of documents, supplemented by what he carried in his memory, that gave a clear picture of the types of agents Soviet military intelligence was tasked to recruit and the information the GRU sought from them. Historians differ on the role Gouzenko and his revelations played at the outset of the Cold War, some seeing it as pivotal, while others pay little attention to it at all. This article sits between those two poles to explore the question: what insights did Gouzenko's revelations give about GRU priorities--and thence Soviet priorities--at the end of World War II? This article examines the categories of information that the GRU sought, including military, science and technology, and political information. GRU collection of this information, the sources it targeted for recruitment, and the urgency it placed on clandestinity of handling those sources, revealed the military and political intelligence the Soviet Union sought to fight the next war. . Taken together, Gouzenko's material showed a Soviet Union that was preparing for war against the United States and Great Britain even before World war II ended.