Phillip is an Emeritus Professor of history at Victoria University, Melbourne, where he was Director of Research and Research Training in the College of Arts. He specialises in the fields of communism, espionage, and the Cold War. His books on the Cold War include Spies and Sparrows: ASIO and the Cold War (Melbourne University Press, 2022), The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents, Third Edition (co-authored, Bedford/St. Martins, 2017), Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York (Fordham University Press, 2014, 2016) and Espionage and Betrayal: Behind the Scenes of the Cold War (co-authored, Feltrinelli Press, 2011). Supervisors: s Address: https://www.vu.edu.au/contact-us/phillip-deery
Russians in Cold War Australia, edited by Phillip Deery & Sheila Fitzpatrick, explores the time ... more Russians in Cold War Australia, edited by Phillip Deery & Sheila Fitzpatrick, explores the time during the Cold War when Russian displaced persons, including former Soviet citizens, were amongst the hundreds of thousands of immigrants given assisted passage to Australia and other Western countries in the wake of the Second World War. With the Soviet Union and Australia as enemies, skepticism surrounding the immigrants’ avowed anti-communism introduced new hardships and challenges. This book examines Russian immigration to Australia in the late 1940s and 1950s, both through their own eyes and those of Australia's security service (ASIO), to whom all Russian speakers were persons of interest.
Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, ... more Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, and this belief underscores his scathing analysis of the uneven and unsuccessful efforts to develop an effective Australian security and intelligence service before 1950.
Publisher's blurb: Incorporating important recent scholarship, this popular supplement combines a... more Publisher's blurb: Incorporating important recent scholarship, this popular supplement combines a comprehensive essay on the history of McCarthyism with compelling documents that trace the course of anti-Communist furor in the U.S. The volume’s 95-page essay follows the campaign against domestic subversion from its origins in the 1930s through its escalation in the 1940s to its decline in the 1950s. The second part includes over 47 original documents (including 6 new sources) — congressional transcripts, FBI reports, speeches, and letters — that chronicle the anti-Communist crusade. The essay and documents have been thoroughly updated to reflect new scholarship and recently revealed archival evidence of Soviet spying in the U.S. Also included are headnotes to the documents, 15 black-and-white photographs, a glossary, a chronology of McCarthyism, a revised bibliographical essay, and an index.
""""From the late 1940s through the 1950s, McCarthyism disfigured the American political landscap... more """"From the late 1940s through the 1950s, McCarthyism disfigured the American political landscape. Under the altar of anticommunism, domestic Cold War crusaders undermined civil liberties, curtailed equality before the law, and tarnished the ideals of American democracy. In order to preserve freedom, they jettisoned some of its tenets. Congressional committees worked in tandem, although not necessarily in collusion, with the FBI, law firms, university administrations, publishing houses, television networks, movie studios, and a legion of government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels to target "subversive" individuals.
Exploring the human consequences of the widespread paranoia that gripped a nation, Red Apple presents the international and domestic context for the experiences of these individuals: the House Un-American Activities Committee, hearings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, resulting in the incarceration of its chairman, Dr. Edward Barsky, and its executive board; the academic freedom cases of two New York University professors, Lyman Bradley and Edwin Burgum, culminating in their dismissal from the university; the blacklisting of the communist writer Howard Fast and his defection from American communism; the visit of an anguished Dimitri Shostakovich to New York in the spring of 1949; and the attempts by O. John Rogge, the Committee's lawyer, to find a "third way" in the quest for peace, which led detractors to question which side he was on.
Examining real-life experiences at the "ground level," Red Apple explores how these six individuals experienced, responded to, and suffered from one of the most savage assaults on civil liberties in American history. Their collective stories illuminate the personal costs of holding dissident political beliefs in the face of intolerance and moral panic that is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago. ""
Review(s) of: Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath, by Bob... more Review(s) of: Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath, by Bob Blauner, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2009. pp. xx, 307.
Review(s) of: Last stand at Nymboida, by 19 August 2010. $25. Director: Jeff Bird. Producers: Pad... more Review(s) of: Last stand at Nymboida, by 19 August 2010. $25. Director: Jeff Bird. Producers: Paddy Gorman, Diane Michael and Kerry Herman. Running time: 56 minutes. DVD $25 (available from PO Box 275, Kurri Kurri NSW 2327).
During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critica... more During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro-Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history.
During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critica... more During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro-Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history. The defection of Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov on 4 April 1954, followed dramatically seventeen days later by his wife, Evdokia, captured international headlines, dominated Australian politics, and reverberated for another forty years. Officially the consul and third secretary of the Russian Embassy in Canberra, Petrov was also a colonel in the Ministry of State Security (MGB). 1 He brought with him bundles of Soviet documentslater dubbed the Petrov Papers 2that underpinned both his interrogation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and his testimony before the Royal Commission on Espionage (RCE). Petrov was one of the nearly three hundred Russians who defected from East to West in the decade after the Second World War. 3 Only rarely has their new-found commitment to the anti-communist cause been questioned by government agencies
Russians in Cold War Australia, edited by Phillip Deery & Sheila Fitzpatrick, explores the time ... more Russians in Cold War Australia, edited by Phillip Deery & Sheila Fitzpatrick, explores the time during the Cold War when Russian displaced persons, including former Soviet citizens, were amongst the hundreds of thousands of immigrants given assisted passage to Australia and other Western countries in the wake of the Second World War. With the Soviet Union and Australia as enemies, skepticism surrounding the immigrants’ avowed anti-communism introduced new hardships and challenges. This book examines Russian immigration to Australia in the late 1940s and 1950s, both through their own eyes and those of Australia's security service (ASIO), to whom all Russian speakers were persons of interest.
Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, ... more Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, and this belief underscores his scathing analysis of the uneven and unsuccessful efforts to develop an effective Australian security and intelligence service before 1950.
Publisher's blurb: Incorporating important recent scholarship, this popular supplement combines a... more Publisher's blurb: Incorporating important recent scholarship, this popular supplement combines a comprehensive essay on the history of McCarthyism with compelling documents that trace the course of anti-Communist furor in the U.S. The volume’s 95-page essay follows the campaign against domestic subversion from its origins in the 1930s through its escalation in the 1940s to its decline in the 1950s. The second part includes over 47 original documents (including 6 new sources) — congressional transcripts, FBI reports, speeches, and letters — that chronicle the anti-Communist crusade. The essay and documents have been thoroughly updated to reflect new scholarship and recently revealed archival evidence of Soviet spying in the U.S. Also included are headnotes to the documents, 15 black-and-white photographs, a glossary, a chronology of McCarthyism, a revised bibliographical essay, and an index.
""""From the late 1940s through the 1950s, McCarthyism disfigured the American political landscap... more """"From the late 1940s through the 1950s, McCarthyism disfigured the American political landscape. Under the altar of anticommunism, domestic Cold War crusaders undermined civil liberties, curtailed equality before the law, and tarnished the ideals of American democracy. In order to preserve freedom, they jettisoned some of its tenets. Congressional committees worked in tandem, although not necessarily in collusion, with the FBI, law firms, university administrations, publishing houses, television networks, movie studios, and a legion of government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels to target "subversive" individuals.
Exploring the human consequences of the widespread paranoia that gripped a nation, Red Apple presents the international and domestic context for the experiences of these individuals: the House Un-American Activities Committee, hearings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, resulting in the incarceration of its chairman, Dr. Edward Barsky, and its executive board; the academic freedom cases of two New York University professors, Lyman Bradley and Edwin Burgum, culminating in their dismissal from the university; the blacklisting of the communist writer Howard Fast and his defection from American communism; the visit of an anguished Dimitri Shostakovich to New York in the spring of 1949; and the attempts by O. John Rogge, the Committee's lawyer, to find a "third way" in the quest for peace, which led detractors to question which side he was on.
Examining real-life experiences at the "ground level," Red Apple explores how these six individuals experienced, responded to, and suffered from one of the most savage assaults on civil liberties in American history. Their collective stories illuminate the personal costs of holding dissident political beliefs in the face of intolerance and moral panic that is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago. ""
Review(s) of: Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath, by Bob... more Review(s) of: Resisting McCarthyism: To Sign or Not to Sign California's Loyalty Oath, by Bob Blauner, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2009. pp. xx, 307.
Review(s) of: Last stand at Nymboida, by 19 August 2010. $25. Director: Jeff Bird. Producers: Pad... more Review(s) of: Last stand at Nymboida, by 19 August 2010. $25. Director: Jeff Bird. Producers: Paddy Gorman, Diane Michael and Kerry Herman. Running time: 56 minutes. DVD $25 (available from PO Box 275, Kurri Kurri NSW 2327).
During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critica... more During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro-Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history.
During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critica... more During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro-Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history. The defection of Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov on 4 April 1954, followed dramatically seventeen days later by his wife, Evdokia, captured international headlines, dominated Australian politics, and reverberated for another forty years. Officially the consul and third secretary of the Russian Embassy in Canberra, Petrov was also a colonel in the Ministry of State Security (MGB). 1 He brought with him bundles of Soviet documentslater dubbed the Petrov Papers 2that underpinned both his interrogation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and his testimony before the Royal Commission on Espionage (RCE). Petrov was one of the nearly three hundred Russians who defected from East to West in the decade after the Second World War. 3 Only rarely has their new-found commitment to the anti-communist cause been questioned by government agencies
"This is a shared entry with Evdokia Alekseevna Petrova". Research edited by Brian Wimb... more "This is a shared entry with Evdokia Alekseevna Petrova". Research edited by Brian Wimborne
The relationship between scientists and Western governments has had a long and uneasy history. Du... more The relationship between scientists and Western governments has had a long and uneasy history. During World War II, new links were forged between governments and the military on the one hand and civilian scientific communities on the other. Global war required the mobilisation and ongoing participation of civilian scientists in military research and development. The wartime partnership between science and the state, culminating in the development of the atomic bomb, was a highly successful one. Western leaders were utterly convinced that scientific breakthroughs in military technology had helped secure victory. No group was more impressed with science as an instrument of national power than the defence establishment, and none was more determined to harness that power for its own purposes in the post-war period. The fresh hopes of defence departments for considerable command over military research clashed, however, with the existing peacetime tradition of civilian control and the pre-war relationship between science and the state. The social relations of science became an overriding preoccupation of scientists during the war years. Scientists nurtured their own post-war ideas about how a partnership with science should be structured and to what purposes it should be directed. There were also vital questions about the role that scientists should play in military research, the notions of responsibility for the results of this research, and the extent to which science should be held accountable to public authority. The implications of these and similar questions were played out during the early Cold War.
Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, ... more Is a security service essential? John Fahey, a former intelligence officer, certainly thinks so, and this belief underscores his scathing analysis of the uneven and unsuccessful efforts to develop an effective Australian security and intelligence service before 1950.
One day in the winter of 1937, Jessie Jordan caught a boat from Hamburg, where she had been livin... more One day in the winter of 1937, Jessie Jordan caught a boat from Hamburg, where she had been living, to Scotland, where she was born. An unassuming, bustling grandmother, she opened a hairdressing business, Jordan’s Salon, in the coastal town of Dundee. There, during the period of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, she provided intelligence to the German government on naval installations, army barracks and the coastguard station at Fife Ness.
The long incarceration of Julian Assange in Britain’s Belmarsh prison can be traced back to Chels... more The long incarceration of Julian Assange in Britain’s Belmarsh prison can be traced back to Chelsea Manning. In February 2010, Private Manning, a talented intelligence analyst with the US Army in Iraq, sent WikiLeaks a short video. The chilling “Collateral Murder” tape depicted two American Apache helicopters unleashing lethal cannon fire on a group of Iraqis and two Reuters journalists. We can see their bodies being blown apart, hear the callous remarks of the American crew and glimpse the horror of actual warfare.
Stretching from 1917 to the present day, Spies covers the intelligence contest between Russia, Gr... more Stretching from 1917 to the present day, Spies covers the intelligence contest between Russia, Great Britain and the United States that extends over more than a century. Perhaps surprisingly, Calder Walton argues that Russia has invariably been one step ahead of the West. Especially before 1945 and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian intelligence services were an underestimated threat. Dating back to the conspiratorial traditions of the Cheka, the secret police created by Lenin, they were simply better spies and used deception more effectively.
This is an impressive biography, impeccably researched and beautifully crafted. In its scope, det... more This is an impressive biography, impeccably researched and beautifully crafted. In its scope, detail, and fluency, it is comparable to the best biographies of George Orwell. The comparison is apt: numerous reviewers likened Horne’s God is an Englishman (1969) to the plain-speaking prose of Orwell, and the publisher’s blurb claims this biography positions Horne as an “antipodean Orwell”.
Because Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler experienced crippling stomach cramps, he turned to a mas... more Because Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler experienced crippling stomach cramps, he turned to a massage therapist to alleviate the pain. That masseur, the Estonian-born and Finnish-trained Felix Kersten, became Himmler’s personal physician and confidant throughout World War II. He is one of the three morally compromised individuals – the other two are the duplicitous Friedrich Weinreb and the elusive Kawashima Yoshiko – who form the group portrait in this fascinating book.
The unsettling opening of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar – “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summe... more The unsettling opening of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar – “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs” – echoes the disturbing death of Ethel Rosenberg. At 8.08pm on June 19, 1953, Ethel was informed that her husband, Julius, had been pronounced dead minutes previously. The rabbi implored her, for the sake of her children, to recant and make a statement, any statement. She remained silent. Then she spoke: “I am ready.”
In 2012 Professor Des Ball, an internationally renowned expert on defence and security, claimed t... more In 2012 Professor Des Ball, an internationally renowned expert on defence and security, claimed that Dr John Burton "probably" worked for the Russian intelligence services when secretary of the Department of External Affairs (1947-50) and was a "witting" party to Soviet espionage in Australia. Burton's daughter, Pamela, was outraged and confronted Ball in 2013. Armed with evidence from Royal Commission on Espionage transcripts that directly contradicted Ball's contention that Burton lied to the commission in 1955, she told him, "You got it wrong." Ball replied that his sources were "too secret" to be revealed. Defence of her father's reputation is not, however, the primary concern of Pamela's compelling and deeply researched memoir. John Burton is widely known as Dr Evatt's secretary and later head of his department, but Persons of Interest is an interweaving and overlapping account-sometimes scholarly, sometimes conversational-of both of Pamela's parents. The lesser-known Cecily Burton is thus given equal weight in this extraordinarily frank account of the relationship. We learn that Burton's private behaviour was far less exemplary than his public life. His hubris and extreme self-belief resulted in neglect of Cecily's needs and deepened her sense of inadequacy. Although attracted by Cecily's intelligence and beauty, John was often uncommunicative, domineering and lacking in empathy. He made domestic decisions without consulting her, was uninvolved in child raising, and was both dismissive and possessive, despite his own infidelities. Drawing on family files, personal papers, diaries, archives and interviews, Pamela concludes that John's "ego compromised his ability to praise" Cecily. His pioneering thinking on problem-solving approaches to conflict resolution, on which he wrote 15 books, did not extend to personal relationships. Until Cecily reclaimed her sense of identity and became more assertive-further straining the marriage, which ended in divorce-she was dependent, controlled and subject to passive aggression. Persons of Interest is both a searingly forthright family history and a history of politics and diplomacy. The world of Canberra diplomats and bureaucrats-a small world in the 1940s but full of jealousies and rivalries-is superbly sketched. So too is John's critical role in reshaping Australian foreign policy: at the UN foundation meetings, in the struggle for Indonesian independence, with the non-aligned movement (especially at the Bandung Conference in 1955), and in his close relations with Asian leaders like Nehru. The book emphasises his significant scholarly contributions to international relations, beginning with the prescient The Alternative in 1954, and his later distinguished career at British and American universities.
... Archives); the late Fr Keaney, Leslie McCarthy, Aileen Stevenson; Steven de Wit, Mgr Ian Wate... more ... Archives); the late Fr Keaney, Leslie McCarthy, Aileen Stevenson; Steven de Wit, Mgr Ian Waters and Rachel Naughton (Melbourne Arch ... of the earliest character portraits of the leading Catholic Action personalities in Melbourne was sketched by Fr James G Murtagh, a member ...
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Books by Phillip Deery
Exploring the human consequences of the widespread paranoia that gripped a nation, Red Apple presents the international and domestic context for the experiences of these individuals: the House Un-American Activities Committee, hearings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, resulting in the incarceration of its chairman, Dr. Edward Barsky, and its executive board; the academic freedom cases of two New York University professors, Lyman Bradley and Edwin Burgum, culminating in their dismissal from the university; the blacklisting of the communist writer Howard Fast and his defection from American communism; the visit of an anguished Dimitri Shostakovich to New York in the spring of 1949; and the attempts by O. John Rogge, the Committee's lawyer, to find a "third way" in the quest for peace, which led detractors to question which side he was on.
Examining real-life experiences at the "ground level," Red Apple explores how these six individuals experienced, responded to, and suffered from one of the most savage assaults on civil liberties in American history. Their collective stories illuminate the personal costs of holding dissident political beliefs in the face of intolerance and moral panic that is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago. ""
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/red-apple-9780823253685?cc=au&lang=en&""
Papers by Phillip Deery
Exploring the human consequences of the widespread paranoia that gripped a nation, Red Apple presents the international and domestic context for the experiences of these individuals: the House Un-American Activities Committee, hearings of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, resulting in the incarceration of its chairman, Dr. Edward Barsky, and its executive board; the academic freedom cases of two New York University professors, Lyman Bradley and Edwin Burgum, culminating in their dismissal from the university; the blacklisting of the communist writer Howard Fast and his defection from American communism; the visit of an anguished Dimitri Shostakovich to New York in the spring of 1949; and the attempts by O. John Rogge, the Committee's lawyer, to find a "third way" in the quest for peace, which led detractors to question which side he was on.
Examining real-life experiences at the "ground level," Red Apple explores how these six individuals experienced, responded to, and suffered from one of the most savage assaults on civil liberties in American history. Their collective stories illuminate the personal costs of holding dissident political beliefs in the face of intolerance and moral panic that is as relevant today as it was seventy years ago. ""
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/red-apple-9780823253685?cc=au&lang=en&""