800.51W89 U.S.S.R./89: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 27—3:15 p.m.]
221. The unusual friendliness of all members of the Soviet Government to which I invited the Department’s attention in my number 207, July 22, 4 p.m. continues to be manifested in a most striking manner.
Litvinov lunched with me yesterday en famille and accompanied me to the first polo match ever played in the Soviet Union. I had personally imported the necessary equipment and taught the Red Army cavalrymen to play. Voroshilov and General Feldman both attended the match and returned with me to the Embassy where they remained until the early hours of the morning. In the course of a [Page 124] very long and intimate conversation with Voroshilov I found as I had suspected that Litvinov had not given Stalin and Voroshilov an altogether accurate version of our discussions with regard to claims and indebtedness. Voroshilov expressed an intense desire “that the relations between our two countries should not only appear to be friendly and intimate but should in reality be friendly and intimate.”
Voroshilov admitted that the railroad and rolling stock position of the Soviet Union in the Far East was still causing him great worry and I hope that the demand of the army for transportation equipment of all sorts may finally overcome Litvinov’s objections. I feel sure that Voroshilov will use his influence with Stalin which is very great to soften Litvinov’s obduracy.
Steiger who is the O. G. P. U.46 surveyor of the diplomatic corps and has most intimate relations with the Kremlin said to me last night that both Kalinin and Molotov and indeed all the leaders of the Soviet Government would like to be invited to my house. I asked him whether that remark included Stalin and he replied that that also was not impossible.
The obvious desire of the leaders of the Soviet Union to cultivate friendly relations with the United States coupled with the sudden improvement in Soviet-British relations and the rapprochement with France seems to me to offer a possibility with reference to development of a new and fruitful collaboration between the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia.
- General State Police Administration, the internal secret police.↩