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. With her husband she defected to Australia in 1954. This happened at
Darwin Airport, at the height of the
Petrov Affair. The Petrovs' memoirs of the episode were contained in their book
Empire of Fear, which was ghost-written by
Michael Thwaites. After the defection, Evdokia was haunted by worries about her family in Moscow, fearing they had been punished or killed. The Red Cross reconnected her to her family in 1960. Her father had been sacked from his job following the defection, and died three years later, but she stayed in contact with her mother until her mother's death in 1965. Her sister Tamara migrated to Australia in 1990. They were protected under the
D-notice system. Although the press agreed not to identify them under the D-notice, the press did not always observe this voluntary protection order. Evdokia became an Australian citizen in 1956. She found work as a typist for William Adams Tractors under the name Anna Allyson. She died in 2002, aged 87. ==Fictional works==