800.51W89 U.S.S.R./76: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 30—1:40 p.m.]
167. Your 130, June 21, 6 p.m. I have not discussed a visit of an American warship to the Soviet Union with any Soviet official since last December when Litvinov expressed an intense desire to have such a visit paid to Vladivostok or Leningrad. He felt that such a visit would be a deterrent to the aggression which he then feared. Unquestionably a visit now would tend to strengthen Litvinov’s conviction referred to in the last paragraph of your telegram 130 and would be disadvantageous in that respect. My own view is that no request for permission to make such a visit should be presented now but that your ultimate decision should be controlled by the result of your conversations with Troyanovsky.
In this connection I venture to express the opinion that so long as Litvinov adheres to his present attitude toward the United States we shall not be able to count on any genuinely friendly cooperation from him either at the forthcoming Naval Conference or elsewhere and I consider the Department’s instruction to Davis cabled to me in your 141, June 27, 7 p.m.35 admirable.
I have however private information that Stalin and the military authorities feel strongly that cooperation with the United States must be strengthened and not destroyed and I do not consider Litvinov’s intransigence irreversible.
A further step which may prove to be desirable for purely administrative reasons in this Embassy may perhaps be turned to advantage. [Page 114] We are not receiving the administrative assistance from the marines which they were sent here to provide and the withdrawal envisaged in the fourth sentence of your 96, May 24, 7 p.m.36 may soon seem wise. Their recall would certainly be interpreted here as a political move indicating a coldness toward the Soviet Union. If their recall should become definitely desirable we should endeavor to time it to produce the maximum political effect. However, we should not go so far in indicating frigidity as to antagonize those leaders in the Soviet hierarchy who desire close collaboration with the United States. I propose to take the general attitude that we are most anxious to cooperate with the Soviet Union but that Litvinov is indifferent to the establishment of such collaboration.
- Foreign Relations, 1934, vol. i, p. 280.↩
- Not printed.↩