I attach a copy of a petition† addressed to Mr. Khrushchev and to yourself which was prepared and signed by thirty Canadian-Soviet dual nationals now living in the Soviet Union and delivered by their spokesman to the Canadian Embassy in Moscow. The petitioners request your help in obtaining permission from the Soviet authorities to leave the Soviet Union and return to Canada.

The thirty signatories are part of a larger group of persons who, since 1956, have gone with their families to the U.S.S.R. from Canada as a result of nostalgia for their native country combined with a naïve acceptance of Soviet propaganda about conditions there. Most of them are Canadian citizens, many are children born and raised in Canada. The total number now in the U.S.S.R. is unknown, but about one hundred have managed (despite police interference) to communicate with our Embassy in Moscow. The total is certainly much larger, and continues to grow. All who have been in touch with the Embassy are living in conditions of hardship, mostly on collective farms, construction sites, and in provincial towns, and since in many cases only the father of the family has previously lived in the Soviet Union (or pre-revolutionary Russia) and knows the language, this hardship is especially intense for wives and children.

Despite repeated approaches by our Embassy in Moscow, including one to Mr. Gromyko, the Soviet authorities up to February of this year had not permitted any of these persons to return to Canada. They claimed them as Soviet citizens on the grounds that they or their parents had been born in territory which is now part of the Soviet Union, or on the strength of the fact that they had signed a document at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, before departure, acknowledging their Soviet citizenship. The Soviet authorities refused to acknowledge the Canadian citizenship even of those, principally wives, who were born in Canada and were not of Russian stock. Oral promises reported to have been made in some cases by the Soviet Embassy here, when it issued visas, that those who did not like life in the Soviet Union would be allowed to leave, remained unfulfilled.

However, since February 1960, our Embassy in Moscow has received unexpectedly from the Soviet authorities documents authorizing the departure from the Soviet Union of two of the repatriates, [nom omis/name omitted]⁵, a young man born and raised in Vancouver who went to the Soviet Union with his parents and brothers in 1958, and [nom omis/name omitted]⁶, a seventy-eight year old woman who had been trying unsuccessfully for several years to return to Canada. It is possible that permission given to these two persons to leave represents the beginning of a change in Soviet policy towards the Canadian repatriates.

In view of this evidence of a possible relaxation of Soviet policy, I am studying the desirability of making strong representations to the Soviet Government on behalf of the repatriates, including the thirty persons who signed the petition, as soon as it has been determined which of them may be readmitted to Canada. Since it may take some time to reach this determination, if you agree I shall instruct the Embassy at Moscow, in acknowledging the petition on your behalf, simply to say that it has been brought to your attention and that the matter is under consideration.⁷

H.C. G[reen]

⁵Le nom a été omis, conformément à la Loi sur la protection des renseignements personnels.
The name has been omitted in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act.

⁶Le nom a été omis, conformément à la Loi sur la protection des renseignements personnels.
The name has been omitted in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act.

⁷Notes marginales :/ Marginal notes:
I. Prime Minister agrees. H.B. R[obinson] June [blank]
II. I am asked to emphasize that the Prime Minister wishes to be shown letters, messages, petitions, and correspondence of all kinds addressed to him, as soon as they are received. If action referred to is likely to take some time, this can be explained in a covering memorandum. H.B. R[obinson] June 8/60.