861.00/6444: Telegram
The Minister in Sweden ( Morris ) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received February 26—3:41 a.m.]
66. The State Telegraph Company of Sweden has just sent me a telegram from the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Government, Tchitcherin, which he sent to me from Petrograd on the 25th instant by radio and which I feel you will want to receive immediately. In connection with this telegram I should like to refer you to my telegram 58, of February 18, 1 p.m.,5 asking what you wish done regarding the Swedish Government communicating with the Soviet Government regarding American interests. The telegram reads as follows6:
“The victorious advance of the valiant Soviet army in Siberia and the universal popular movement against counter revolution and against foreign invasion which has spread with irresistable force throughout eastern Siberia, have brought quite near the prospect of reestablishing relations between Soviet Russia and the United States of America. The reports that have reached us from our representative, Martens, show with full clearness that American commerce and industry are able to help in the largest measure the great work of reconstruction of Russian economic life; that the United States can play a gigantic role in the realization of this problem; and that numerous prominent representatives of the American business world are quite willing to take an active part in this work. The more trials of civil war which Russia has gone through are receding into the past, the more all the forces of the Russian people will concentrate on the fundamental aim of the reconstruction of the country; and American production, wealth, and enterprise can be of the greatest use in helping us to attain our purpose. It can be affirmed, decidedly, that the connections between Soviet Russia and America will be of the greatest use to both parties and that both will reap from them the largest benefits. Having no intention whatever of interfering with the internal affairs of America and having for its sole aim peace and trade, the Russian Soviet Government is desirous of beginning peace negotiations with the American Government. On December 5, the seventh All-Russian Congress of Soviets, solemnly proposed to all the Governments of the Allied and Associated Powers and to each of them separately that negotiations should be commenced with the view of concluding peace. We repeat once more this proposal and ask the Government of the United States of America to inform us of its wishes with respect to the time and place of peace negotiations between the two countries. Signed. Peoples Commissary for Foreign Affairs Tchitcherin.”