John Benjamin Clark Watkins (3 December 1902 – 12 October 1964) was a Canadian diplomat and scholar who served as Canadian ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1956. Describing Watkins as "sophisticated, erudite and fluent in Russian", Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post wrote that he was the "perfect ambassador" to Moscow. He is credited with organizing a historic meeting between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson.
Early life Born in Norval, Ontario, Watkins was the first child of John Watkins and Jane Clark. He had two sisters, Elizabeth and Isabel.
Watkins studied French, German, and Latin at the University of Toronto, and earned a master's degree by 1927. In a trip to Europe in the late 1920s, he was a guide and companion to Heywood Hale Broun in France, Holland, and Denmark. He left Europe for the United States in 1930, where he attended Columbia University and joined the staff of the American-Scandinavian Foundation in New York City. After Columbia, Watkins attended Cornell University in 1942 and earned a PhD there in 1944; his thesis was about the Danish writer Gustav Wied. During World War II, he returned to Canada to teach at Queen's University at Kingston, then Guelph Agricultural College. Watkins became an associate professor of English at the University of Manitoba in 1944. In 1946, Watkins translated the complete works of Honore de Balzac into English.
Upon an invitation by Humphrey Hume Wrong, Watkins reluctantly agreed to take the Canadian Foreign Service Examination. He was offered a position as a foreign service officer and left the University of Manitoba to join the Department of External Affairs (DEA). Watkins rapidly advanced from first secretary of the European Division to head of section to chargé d'affaires in Moscow.
Diplomatic career
First post in the Soviet Union: chargé d'affaires
On 1 September 1948, Watkins officially replaced John Wendell Holmes as the chargé d'affaires ad interim. He knew some Russian prior to arriving in Moscow, and set himself apart from other Western diplomats in the city by becoming fluent in the language. There, Watkins befriended George Costakis, the long-time head of personnel at the Canadian embassy and collector of Soviet art. While Stalin led the Soviet Union, there was limited opportunity for foreign diplomats like Watkins to travel and interact with Soviet society. Near the end of his post in Moscow, Watkins began to develop health issuesheart and circulatory weaknesses that were not diagnosed at his medical examination upon entering the DEAthat would affect him for the remainder of his life. The DEA announced in January 1951 that he was to return to Ottawa on sick leave, and he was replaced by Robert Ford.
Norway By the end of 1951, Watkins was appointed to serve a diplomatic post in Oslo, Norway. Canadian government records list him as envoy to Iceland and Norway from the summer of 1952 to 1954. In February 1954, it was reported that Chester Ronning would replace Watkins as the minister to Norway.
Second post in the Soviet Union: ambassador After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Georgy Malenkov expressed a willingness to resolve issues of conflict between the East and the West, and there was an apparent easing of tensions within Canada–Soviet Union relations when Dmitri Chuvakhin was appointed Soviet ambassador to Canada. In response, Watkins was officially made Canada's first peacetime ambassador to the Soviet Union on 1 January 1954. Watkins found that the Soviet Union was more open under the leadership of First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, and he had a fondness for befriending Soviet officials and was able to develop a large number of contacts. To his detriment, this would prove costly and allow him to become a target of Soviet espionage.
In the fourth quarter of 1954, Watkins met a young man named Kamahl in a Muslim area of one of the southern republics of the Soviet Union and invited him back to his hotel room. The hotel staff likely observed the pair entering Watkins' room. A few months later, Watkins received a postcard from Kamahl who stated he would be visiting Moscow. Watkins entertained Kamahl in Moscow, and the two men engaged in a brief romantic affair consummated in the younger man's hotel room. As he did with every other encounter, Watkins dutifully reported to Quebec his encounters with Kamahl and described him as a young man who had doubts about the Soviet system. The only thing he failed to report was the homosexual aspect of their relationship. Unbeknownst to Watkins, Kamahl's visit was staged by the KGB and the two men were photographed together in Kamahl's room. The KGB sought to exploit Watkins' indiscretion not by blackmailing him, but rather by manipulating him to become an agent of influence by enveloping him in a "debt of gratitude". In contrast to his first post in Moscow, he found himself enjoying access to top officials within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and invitations to social events that other Western Bloc ambassadors could not get. All of this was planned by the KGB.
In April 1955, Watkins met then befriended "Aloysha", who introduced himself as Alexei Mikhailovich Gorbunov, a historian and consultant to the Soviet foreign ministry. Watkins also described him as his best Soviet informant. Watkins also met Anatoly Nitkin, who introduced himself as a professor of history at the Moscow Academy of History. Watkins did not know that "Aloysha" was actually KGB officer Oleg Mikhailovich Gribanovthe second-highest-ranking official within the Second Directorate and the mastermind of the entrapment operation against Watkins involving Kamahland Nitkin was Anatoly Gorsky, a KGB official senior to Gribanov and a former handler of Kim Philby. The three spent much time together, including a weekend at "Aloysha's" dacha in the Crimea in June. "Aloysha" would soon play an important role in Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson's visit to the Soviet Union.
After a meeting in San Francisco that same month, Pearson was invited by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to visit the Soviet Union. Pearson had expressed his interest in visiting the USSR to Watkins the previous November, and it is likely that Watkins had relayed that to Soviet officials with whom he had established close contact. Watkins reported in July that "Aloysha" had close contacts with Molotov, Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin, and by August he was Watkins' main informant on the Soviet's views of the visit pending with Pearson. In planning the meeting, Pearson advised Watkins not to show the Soviets too much enthusiasm for their interest in a trade agreement. The official Canadian delegation included Pearson, Holmes, Watkins, George Ignatieff, Mitchell Sharp, and Raymond Crépault; Pearson's wife, Maryon, and journalists René Lévesque and Richard J. Needham accompanied them. On 5 October 1955, Molotov led the Soviet dignitaries in meeting the Canadians arriving at the Moscow airport. What has been described as the most memorable event of the trip is a drinking party that occurred when Pearson, Watkins, Ignatieff, and Crépault visited Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin at the Yusupov Palace in Yalta on 11 October. "Aloysha"/Gribanov also attended the party and was understood by the other Canadians to be Watkins' friend; Ignatieff apparently believed him to be a MVD official. It is at this party that Khrushchev was alleged by a KGB defector Yuri Nosenko to have taunted Watkins about his homosexuality during a toast. In his memoirs, Pearson noted that Watkins looked "less and less happy" as the evening progressed; however, Ignatieff, who understood Russian, denied that he heard the remark and Watkins' account of the meeting expressed no concerns.
Watson's writings show that he held a view of the Soviet Union was that more trustful and generous than that of Pearson or Ignatieff. He continued to meet with "Aloysha" and wrote the DEA to explain his importance to Khrushchev; Watkins even suggested that "Aloysha" wrote parts of the Soviet leader's speeches at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pearson remained unconvinced about Soviet aims and told the House of Commons in January 1956 that "not a single basic objective of Soviet policy was changed". In February, Watkins sent Pearson a lengthy dispatch reiterating a meeting in which "Aloysha" voiced the Soviet's displeasure with Pearson over his continued skepticism of Soviet intentions. Pearson fired back: "My visit did not reassure me in regard to the peaceful aims of that policy, but certainly did convince me that the people themselves, whatever might be the views of their rulers, did sincerely desire peace. You might tell your friend Aloysha one day that if he wants to convince me of the pacific intentions of his Politburo friends, he should explain why they find it necessary to have 400 modern submarines." Watkins was recalled from the Soviet Union shortly afterwards.
More than a year after his affair with Kamahl and just before he was to return to Ottawa, Watkins was invited by "Aloysha" to his office. The Soviet official acted troubled and stated he had gained custody of the KGB material compromising to Watkins, but would do what he could to prevent the KGB from exploiting him. Watkins, understanding that his career depended upon the goodwill of the Soviets, had skilfully been placed into "Aloysha's" debt. Following through on the plan to get the ambassador to become an agent of influence steering Canadian policy away from the United States and towards the Soviet Union, "Aloysha" implied that Watkins could return the favour when he returned to Ottawa.
On 3 April 1956, Watkins was recalled to Ottawa to become assistant under-secretary of state for External Affairs. David Chalmer Reece, a former colleague of Watkins in the Canadian diplomatic corps who had also been one of his students at the University of Manitoba, recalled that Watkins "seemed much the same in Ottawa, gentle and charming, but a little melancholy and bothered by ill health".
Denmark Watkins officially became the Canadian ambassador to Denmark on 30 August 1958. Having developed diabetes, his health continued to decline and he spent Christmas 1959 hospitalized in Copenhagen with a continuous nosebleed. Unwell and taking heart medications regularly, Watkins again returned to Ottawa in 1960 where he was an assistant undersecretary with External Affairs. After lengthy medical leaves, Watkins officially retired from the Department of External Affairs on 25 July 1963.
Retirement In retirement, Watkins prepared his move to France by donating his valuable collection of Russian and Scandinavian books to various Canadian universities. His collection of paintings by Pablo Picasso and Russian avant-garde artists, including Marc Chagall, were distributed to friends for safe-keeping. Watkins retired to Paris, where he lived at the Hôtel Lenox on the Left Bank. He was a frequent dinner guest of the Canadian ambassador to France, Jules Léger, and his wife Gabrielle, and Basil Rakoczi was among the many unknown artists he befriended. After entertaining his cousins in Paris and a road trip around Europe in May 1964, Watkins suffered a heart attack that summer. In September, he moved to an apartment in Montparnasse.
Soviet defections, Operation Rock Bottom and death