Ebony Nilsson invites readers to view the history of Soviet refugees through the individual histories of seven people of various ethnic backgrounds who emigrated to Australia: three Chinese Russians, a Soviet Pole, a Soviet Jew, a Latvian, and a Russian who arrived to Australia as a Ukrainian. Their displacement was caused by occupation and one of the most dramatic calamities of the twentieth century—the Second World War. They went through concentration and death camps, forced labor, and evacuation, experiencing physical and psychological torture, hunger, and identity crises. The value of this well-researched study rests in its sources. The author meticulously investigated people’s stories, interviewing them, analyzing their diaries, memoirs, and family histories, and examining archival records. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the domestic intelligence and national security agency of the Commonwealth of Australia, offered the most extensive record that helped the author piece together people’s lives, their social experiences, and political inclinations. The list of archives and libraries where Nilsson conducted her research is impressive, and its geography reveals the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the author’s approach (the Russian Federation, Latvia, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom).

This approach allowed Nilsson to trace the tortuous road of DPs (displaced persons) from Europe to Australia and in some cases their pathways back to the Soviet Union, inspired by the Soviets’ victories over Nazism, as well as Soviet propaganda. The readers also learn about Russian refugees who found themselves in China, multiple generations of Russian residents of the city of Harbin who “were swept up in a wave of pro-Soviet patriotism” and those who were anti-Bolshevik and anti-Soviet “Whites” (7), a mixture of individuals who emigrated to Australia before 1960, a few years later than the European DPs. Many became members of trade unions and Russian clubs in Australia (Sydney’s pro-Soviet/Communist Russian Social Club and the Australia-Russia Society, and the anti-Communist Russian House), trying to adjust to their new environment and comply with the Australian government’s official policy of assimilation.

The most fascinating aspect of this book is the analysis of people’s shifting identities and their efforts to cling to their cultural roots and traditions, while they tried to avoid being labeled as communists and spies. Some DPs like Juris, a refugee from Latvia, were repatriated only to become dissidents, falling victim to the KGB’s persecution, “profilaktika,” and punitive psychiatry (109–14). Most, however, were eventually naturalized by the Australian government, going through a vigorous screening procedure by the Australian secret police. The post-war Venona Project and Australia’s anti-communist stance made the Soviet immigrants vulnerable: they were surveilled and interrogated, realizing that they had to choose between politics and silence to alleviate their existence as “pro-Soviet ‘enemy aliens’” (12). Some left-leaning DPs and pro-Soviet patriots developed close links with officials of the Soviet Embassy and TASS, becoming Soviet agents of influence, working for the Soviet secret police and the Soviet Repatriation Agency, and propagandizing Soviet foreign policy and culture. Soviet films, censored by the Australian government and smuggled to Australia, became a vehicle of Soviet propaganda (36–37, 62). These individuals were carefully monitored and investigated by the ASIO and the Royal Commission on Espionage for subversive activities and often denied Australian citizenship. Others joined anti-Soviet associations, such as the Russian House, and cooperated with the ASIO, offering information about the members of the Russian Social Club and their activities (33, 90). The author argues that the ASIO fell into a trap of binaries, overlooking the complexities of people’s fluid identities and the changes that they went through outside the country of their birth. Although being critical of the Soviet system, the majority gravitated toward Russian culture, yet the opaqueness, “ambivalences and contradictions” of these men’s and women’s views and identities, especially that of ethnic Jews, made the ASIO suspicious of their lives and allegiances (182, 184).

This book makes an important contribution to the history of displacement, the Cold War, and intelligence studies, offering insights into the Australian state’s strategies and tactics of dealing with immigrants and ideologically suspicious groups of refugees. The ASIO’s methods and approaches have been examined in dedicated literature that focuses on intelligence and the agency’s activities as part of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, but very few studies exist that place them within the broader history of displacement and human experiences and transformations caused by occupation and war. Nilsson’s study skillfully fills this gap.