RCMP tried to gain Soviet naval intelligence from defector during Cold War, records show

The young Russian seaman who turned up exhausted and bleeding on the British Columbia shore struck a Canadian intelligence official as well mannered, sincere and athletic, built like Tarzan of the movies.

Less than two years later, defector Sergei Kourdakov would die in a California motel room – apparently by accidentally shooting himself – after joining an evangelical Christian group dedicated to smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain.

Newly released archival records of the RCMP Security Service shed fresh light on Kourdakov’s tragic odyssey, which made international headlines in the early 1970s. The classified memos, messages and reports also detail RCMP efforts to glean valuable intelligence from the unexpected visitor.

“He fully appreciated our interest in him and his information, and expressed a sincere desire to co-operate to the best of his ability,” reads one memo.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which assumed counter-espionage duties from the RCMP in 1984, released the 802-page file on Kourdakov to The Canadian Press in response to an Access to Information request.

Some portions of the dossier, though half a century old, were considered still too sensitive to disclose.

Kourdakov was a 20-year-old nautical school trainee in early September 1971 when his ship, the fishing vessel “Shturman Yelagin,” moored in the waters near Tasu in B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands.

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Born in Siberia, he was keen on economics, history and politics, and enjoyed photography, writing and amateur radio. If Kourdakov had returned to the Soviet Union, he likely would have received a junior naval commission with duties as a radio operator.

But he had become disillusioned with the Russian system, contemplating defection as early as age 17.

“I don’t believe in the idea of the Communist Party of Soviet…