Issue 139 (2018)
R. Siromskyi, PhD in History, Associate Professor
Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2018.139.13
“MEASURES ARE TAKEN TO RETURN TO THE HOMELAND”:
BORYS DOTSENKO CASE OF 1967
In the article, based on unpublished archival materials and printed sources, an episode with defection in 1967 with an internship in Edmonton by a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Nuclear Physics at the Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University Borys Dotsenko is covered. At the end of his stay at the University of Alberta, unexpectedly, trainee asked for political asylum in Canada. The scientist explained his step by reason of both political and professional nature. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR succeeded in a series of measures designed to return the “nonreturnees” (“nevozvrashchenets”), including pressure on Canadian authorities. The rector of the University of Kyiv sent a telegram to the president of the University of Alberta on “provocative actions” concerning their trainee. After unsuccessful attempts by the staff of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa to persuade the physicist to return to Kyiv, the KGB resorted to the use of a “family factor” (touching letters from his wife and mother). Despite appeals from the official Moscow to return B. Dotsenko, the Canadian government referred to the human right to choose a residence and extended the visa. To somehow explain the fact of non-return of the scientist, a widely accepted method of total compromise was used. In general, the flight of B. Dotsenko caused the Soviet system of image losses and led to the cessation of the practice of exchanging scholarship between the University of Alberta and Kyiv.
Key words: Borys Dotsenko, Kyiv University, defection, KGB, political asylum, Canada.
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