About: Gerald Brooke     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : yago:WikicatPrisonersAndDetaineesOfTheSovietUnion, within Data Space : dbpedia.org:8891 associated with source document(s)
QRcode icon
http://dbpedia.org:8891/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdbpedia.org%2Fresource%2FGerald_Brooke

Gerald Brooke (born 1938 in Sheffield, England) was a British teacher who taught Russian in the early 1960s at in Red Lion Square, Holborn, central London. In 1965, during the Easter break, he travelled to the Soviet Union. Brooke and his wife Barbara were arrested on 25 April by KGB agents for smuggling anti-Soviet leaflets. Brooke later claimed he had passed on concealed documents, including codes, on behalf of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists.

AttributesValues
rdf:type
rdfs:label
  • Gerald Brooke (en)
rdfs:comment
  • Gerald Brooke (born 1938 in Sheffield, England) was a British teacher who taught Russian in the early 1960s at in Red Lion Square, Holborn, central London. In 1965, during the Easter break, he travelled to the Soviet Union. Brooke and his wife Barbara were arrested on 25 April by KGB agents for smuggling anti-Soviet leaflets. Brooke later claimed he had passed on concealed documents, including codes, on behalf of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. (en)
dcterms:subject
Wikipage page ID
Wikipage revision ID
Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage
sameAs
dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate
has abstract
  • Gerald Brooke (born 1938 in Sheffield, England) was a British teacher who taught Russian in the early 1960s at in Red Lion Square, Holborn, central London. In 1965, during the Easter break, he travelled to the Soviet Union. Brooke and his wife Barbara were arrested on 25 April by KGB agents for smuggling anti-Soviet leaflets. Barbara was later released and returned to Britain, but Gerald was sentenced to five years' detention, including four years in labour camps, for "subversive anti-Soviet activity on the territory of the Soviet Union". Brooke lived in Finchley in northwest London, and his case was raised in the House of Commons by local MP Margaret Thatcher. After four years in custody he was exchanged, on 24 July 1969, for Soviet spies Morris and Lona Cohen, whose "worknames" (code names) while in the UK were Peter and Helen Kroger, who had been arrested by Special Branch detectives. The Russian authorities only told Brooke he was being sent home 24 hours before he was released back to Britain. Upon his arrival at Heathrow Brooke was surprised by the huge presence of journalists and reporters. He explained that he was suffering from an inflamed colon, aggravated by prison food, and he was not used to speaking English or seeing so many people. Prevented from saying too much about his ordeal, he simply stated that prison conditions "were not particularly soft." The Cohens returned to the Soviet Union in October 1969 after serving nine years of their 20-year sentence. Such exchanges had happened before. Notable examples included Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for U2 pilot Gary Powers and Konon Molody (aka Gordon Lonsdale) for Greville Wynne, but British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labour Government was criticised by the opposition for agreeing to release Peter and Helen Kroger in exchange for Brooke. Opponents claimed it set a dangerous precedent, and was an example of blackmail rather than a fair exchange. Brooke later claimed he had passed on concealed documents, including codes, on behalf of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. In later years, Gerald Brooke taught Russian language, inter alia, at the Languages Faculty of the University of Westminster (the same institution as had been called Holborn College, and which was also called, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Polytechnic of Central London). The Languages Faculty was based in Euston Road, London. (en)
gold:hypernym
schema:sameAs
prov:wasDerivedFrom
page length (characters) of wiki page
foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf
is Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage of
is foaf:primaryTopic of
Faceted Search & Find service v1.17_git139 as of Feb 29 2024


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 08.03.3331 as of Sep 2 2024, on Linux (x86_64-generic-linux-glibc212), Single-Server Edition (62 GB total memory, 54 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2024 OpenLink Software