CDSK00002

Part 2 of 3 of CSIS ATIP 117-2020-542. After his defection, Sergei Kourdakov was fêted at lunches and cocktail parties from Windsor and London, Ontario to Parliament Hill. But he displayed very little gratitude for private citizens' and the Government of Canada's exertions on his behalf, even threatening to return to the USSR. The RCMP Security Service assessed Kourdakov was "immature, easily influenced by flattery, and extremely mercenary." Intelligence officials speculated that he joined the evangelical movement after he did not receive the "adulation or prestige he expected" within Canada's Russian Orthodox Church. Kourdakov's retellings of his story increasingly emphasized the persecution of Christians within the USSR and religious motives for defecting. These accounts bore very little resemblance to his preliminary interviews with intelligence and immigration officials. Government financial aid was discontinued. The package also includes a series of newspaper clippings relating to Kourdakov's 1973 death in a California motel.

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