861.51/530: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
1459. For your information, and recommendation as to course of action to be taken. Department is in receipt of communication from [Page 626] British Embassy dated March 28, enclosing paraphrase of telegram from British Foreign Office dated March 21, reading as follows:
“His Majesty’s Government primarily responsible for the support of the Provisional Government in Northern Russia have been carefully considering the financial position of that Government which appears to them very precarious, seeing that their income from taxes and from loans from the fiduciary portion of the new rouble issue from August 1918 to the end of the present year is not likely to exceed 98 million roubles against a probable expenditure of 284 million roubles. As the United States Government are doubtless aware the Provisional Government have requested the representatives of the Associated Governments for a loan of 300 million roubles.
His Majesty’s High Commissioner at Archangel has however recommended to His Majesty’s Government that the Associated Governments should, instead of making the Provisional Government a loan which they could more or less spend as they liked, assume the responsibility of financing ‘The Nation,’ e.g., the War, Naval, Post and Telegraph Departments of the Provisional Government for the first six months of 1919 up to a total limit of 10 million roubles a month inasmuch as in normal times the Archangel Government would have received collaterals for these Departments from Central Russian exchange. Mr. Lindley25 considers that economy and efficiency would thus be better served and that the Provisional Government would, after being relieved of the burden of ‘National’ services be able to finance the remaining ‘Provincial’ Services.
His Majesty’s Government are prepared to assume themselves one quarter of the proposed expenditure of 10 million roubles a month and another quarter on behalf of the French, under the arrangement concluded in August 1918, whereby His Majesty’s Government have to bear in the first instance the French share of the cost of intervention in Northern Russia. They are therefore anxious to authorize Mr. Lindley to inform the Provisional Government that in place of the loan they will receive assistance up to 5 million roubles a month for the first six months of the present year for National Services on condition that they submit monthly estimates and accounts and allow examination of items by the Technical Officers.
You should inform the United States Government accordingly and express the hope that as, in the case of Italy they entirely agreed, and in the case of the United States their Representative was a signatory of the Murmansk agreement of July 1918,26 Item 12 of which states:
‘The Representatives of Great Britain, the United States and France recognize that their Governments must give the necessary financial assistance to the Murmansk Regional Council.’
they also will agree to be responsible for two million five hundred [thousand?] roubles a month.”
- Francis O. Lindley, British Commissioner in Russia.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, vol. ii, pp. 493–495.↩