Digitised service records (NAA) (Kusmin)

Digitised Embarkation roll entry 1 2 (AWM)

Military Intelligence file (NAA) (Kuzmin)

Alien registration 1 2 (NAA) (Kusmin)

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P.M. tells lawyer he's drunk. - Mirror, Perth, 10 April 1943, p. 13.

From Russian Anzacs in Australian History:

But some Russians returning from the Western Front were indeed very critical of the reigning social order. In May 1918 the censor intercepted a letter Peter Kusmin wrote to his relative in Siberia. Kusmin, after being severely wounded in 1917, served in a depot in England and had enough time to observe life around him. He wrote: 'Here in England they have a Bourgeois Government, i.e. worse than a Monarchy. The rich look down on the poor as if they were cattle. The poor are almost dying from hunger. In Russia the working people all have their own houses but in England the working classes have nothing. ... I have already asked to be sent to the Russian Army but have received no reply. They tell me I made an oath to King George V to fight to the end of the war, but I am ready to send him to the same place the Russian soldiers sent their Tzar to. I have a lot of good friends who know why the war is being continued, but they are afraid to speak, but if the war continues a year or two more the same will happen here as in Russia and the people will fight the Capitalist whom they will find is their enemy and not the Germans.' There was obviously some official concern about his 'good friends' who shared these radical views, and so Kusmin was boarded on the first transport back to Australia.