File No. 861.00/1309
The Consul General at Moscow ( Summers) to the Secretary of State 1
[Received March 17, 2.15 p.m.]
251. President’s message read shortly after opening Congress of Soviets last evening, Sverdlov, Chairman Central Executive Committee, presiding. Following is exact translation of portions of official minutes:
Chairman Sverdlov: Comrades, I shall have difficulty in reading all the telegrams received here. Have received a vast number. One telegram stands out among them which I shall submit to your attention. It is the telegram from [the President of the United States]. The telegram is as follows (reads telegram. Applause). Comrades, allow me in the name of the Congress to express my firm belief that the wide masses of the proletariat and the semiproletariat of western Europe as well as of America and Australia are with us with all their hearts. Allow me to express my firm belief that these masses are watching with the closest attention the struggle which we are carrying on here in Russia and I will permit myself to submit to your attention the resolution which was adopted by the presidium of the Central Executive Committee in answer to President Wilson’s address to the Congress. The resolution reads as follows:
The Congress expresses its gratitude to the American people, above all the laboring and exploited classes of the United States, for the sympathy expressed to the Russian people by President Wilson through the Congress of Soviets in the days of severe trials.
The Russian Socialistic Federative Republic of Soviets takes advantage of President Wilson’s communication to express to all peoples perishing and suffering from the horrors of imperialistic war its warm sympathy and firm belief that the happy time is not far distant when the laboring masses of all countries [Page 400] will throw off the yoke of capitalism and will establish a socialistic state of society, which alone is capable of securing just and lasting peace as well as the culture and well-being of ail laboring people (Applause).
Comrades, allow me to consider this applause a sufficient answer that you all join this resolution.
- Sent via the Consulate at Vladivostok.↩