| Biography | Michael Bialoguski was a Polish-Australian medical practitioner, musician and intelligence agent, who played a significant part in the 1954 Petrov Affair.
When he was three years old, Bolshevik forces were on the point of shooting him and his entire family, when his father bribed them with his gold watch; they were forced to flee immediately, and made their way to Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania). He attended school there, studied violin at the Vilnius Conservatorium, receiving a diploma in 1935, and commenced a course in medicine at the Stefan Batory University. H
He was twice jailed by the invading German forces in 1939. It was at this time that he had his first experience of conducting an orchestra, that of a musical comedy troupe. In 1941 he travelled across the Soviet Union by train to Vladivostok, on to Japan, departing ostensibly for Curaçao but using forged papers to come instead to Sydney, Australia, where he worked as a violinist and music arranger. He joined the Australian Army, served as an orderly at an army hospital, and was discharged in order to continue his medical studies at the University of Sydney. In 1947 he qualified as a doctor, and he practised as a general practitioner. |