800.51W89 U.S.S.R./121: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:20 p.m.]
298. Skvirsky who is here on vacation called on me obviously under orders from the Foreign Office. He described what he alleged was the exact point of view of the Soviet Government with regard to settlement of debts and claims. The main point of his argument was that the Soviet Government could not make any settlement with us which would cause at this time a revival of the claims of England and France. He argued that the payment of extra interest on credits from American exporters even though our Government should carry a large part of the credit risk would produce immediate revival of the claims of other nations. He said he had advised his Government that the President could obtain easily the support of public opinion for a settlement along the lines of Troyanovsky’s last proposal to you.
I replied that I believed he was totally in error, that public opinion in the United States had been so outraged by the defaults of France, Great Britain, et al., that any direct loan or unrestricted credit to any nation on earth was a political impossibility and that I hoped he would inform his Government that this was the fact.
He answered that I had been so long away from America that I was out of touch with the present state of public opinion, that he was in close touch with American public opinion and that if the President should accept Troyanovsky’s last proposal he would have the almost unanimous approval of public opinion. I replied that I felt sure that public opinion would approve only a sharing of the credit risks of American industry and that I had no reason to believe that the President had deviated from the position he had taken in his negotiations with Litvinov or that he would alter that position. I should be obliged if you would inform me if my view of American public opinion and that point of view of the President is a mistaken one.
I was somewhat surprised by the vehemence with which Skvirsky insisted that the Soviet Government was even more anxious today to reach a settlement than it had been when Litvinov was in Washington.
I see no reason to disbelieve Skvirsky’s assertion that the chief obstacle in the minds of the members of the Soviet Government is the difficulty of devising a method of distinction between the claims of our Government and of other governments at a moment when the Soviet Government is making every effort to establish intimate relations with England and France.
[Page 145]I venture to suggest that we should exercise whatever ingenuity we may possess in attempting to devise a basis of settlement which while acceptable to us could not be acceptable to France, Great Britain and other claimants.