Evdokia Petrova

Evdokia Alexeyevna Petrova (Russian: Евдоки́я Алексе́евна Петро́ва; (1914-09-15)September 15, 1914[1] – (2002-07-19)July 19, 2002) was a Soviet spy in Australia in the 1950s.

[2] Raised in the Soviet Union, Petrova worked as a bureaucrat in the state-run forced labor camps or gulags.

In 1951, she was posted with her husband as a diplomat to Australia, though her real work was as a spy, in the rank of captain, against the Australian government.

In this capacity she provided clerical, cypher, and operational assistance to the Soviet embassy in Canberra.

The Petrovs' memoirs of the episode were contained in their book Empire of Fear, which was ghost-written by Michael Thwaites.