Soviet ambassador expelled

The ambassador of the Soviet Union, Vsevolod Sofinsky, was ordered to leave the country within 72 hours after he allegedly delivered money to the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party.

At the height of the Cold War and one month after Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan, the Soviet ambassador to New Zealand, Vsevolod Sofinsky, was accused of meddling in domestic politics. He was subsequently asked to leave the country – becoming, it is believed, the first Soviet ambassador to be expelled by a Western nation.

Sofinsky’s expulsion resulted from an incident shortly before Christmas, when he had allegedly delivered $10,000 (equivalent to $50,000 in 2016) to the national secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (SUP), a communist political party. New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) had long suspected that the SUP received financial support from the USSR, but had no proof – the SUP generally avoided direct contact with the Soviet embassy in Wellington.

Urgently needing money to print its newspaper after an expected cash delivery by a KGB courier failed, the SUP took a risk and rang the Soviet embassy in late 1979. Could the ambassador deliver the funds when he visited Auckland? The SIS had intercepted this phone call and bugged the Auckland motel in which Sofinsky met the SUP’s national secretary, George Jackson.

Although there was some doubt about Sofinsky’s precise role – the tape recordings were of poor quality – and both parties vehemently denied that money had changed hands, the prime minister, Robert Muldoon, felt there was sufficient evidence to recommend to Cabinet that the ambassador be expelled.

There were fears that this move would imperil New Zealand’s lucrative mutton and butter trade with the USSR, but in the end the superpower retaliated merely by declaring New Zealand’s ambassador to Moscow, Jim Weir, persona non grata and formally expelling him. New Zealand’s trade with the USSR in fact increased immediately following the incident, and continued to do so after formal diplomatic relations were re-established in 1984.

Image: the Soviet legation in Wellington