Fed: What happened to Mrs Petrov's shoe?

AAP General News (Australia)
04-02-2004
Fed: What happened to Mrs Petrov's shoe?

By Max Blenkin

CANBERRA, April 2 AAP - One of the minor but enduring mysteries of Australian political
history is just what did happen to Evdokia Petrov's shoe.

This elegant item of female attire fell from its owner's foot on April 19, 1954 as
Mrs Petrov, flanked by a pair of thuggish KGB guards and mobbed by a crowd convinced she
was being dragged to her death, boarded an aircraft at Sydney airport to return to Russia.

Black and white news film of the time show a member of the crowd holding aloft the
item of footwear.

It has since become known as the "red shoe", symbolic of the Cold War intrigues of the era.

It also hasn't been sighted since that day and may be sitting in someone's wardrobe
or may have gone overseas.

Old Parliament House in Canberra, the scene of much of the political drama sparked
by the defection of Mrs Petrov and her husband Vladimir, is now seeking the shoe to add
to its Petrov exhibition which starts in August.

Old Parliament House staff doubt the shoe was actually the red of popular legend. That's
believed more likely to refer to communism.

So just how did Mrs Petrov get by with one shoe for the remainder of a night of high
drama which ended in Darwin when she finally decided to defect.

What she did was borrow a pair of shoes from BOAC airline hostess Joyce Bull who said
today they were eventually returned.

Ms Bull said she spent much of the flight talking to and comforting a distraught Mrs
Petrov in the airliner's ladies lounge, conveying messages from the pilot who was in radio
contact with intelligence officials on the ground.

Mrs Petrov, crying and smoking constantly, told Ms Bull she believed her husband was
dead and asked if they were going to Melbourne.

"She was very tired and I said surely we can do something to help you. She said `no-one
can help me - those two men with me have guns'," she said today.

In Darwin, officials insisted everyone get off the aircraft then relieved the two KGB
men of their revolvers and Mrs Petrov was able to talk to her husband on the telephone.

Ms Bull said it was only when Mrs Petrov heard their pet dog bark in the background
did she realise it really was her husband and finally made up her mind to defect.

She turned to the senior Australian official, Northern Territory administrator Reginald
Leydin, declaring: "Take me away."

AAP mb/sb/drp/bwl

KEYWORD: PETROV SHOE

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