The biographies of migrants – as individuals who move through countries, across borders and continents – can be difficult to piece together. There are often gaps in their backgrounds and stories which remain mysterious, or parts of their lives which are not explicable. This same is true of the biographies of spies, though for different reasons. Writing the biography of a Russian migrant who became an intelligence officer with the fledgling Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), then, was a challenging process and still resulting story still contains many gaps. But figures like Vladimir Mischenko, also known as Bill Marshall, reveal the importance of those who work behind-the-scenes, shaping Australian history from the shadows

Ebony Nilsson is a research fellow in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and a visiting fellow in the Australia Studies Institute at the ANU. She is an historian of migration, surveillance, and the Cold War, particularly in Australia.