861.00 Party, All-Union Communist/202: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kirk) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 22—10:40 a.m.]
160. Soviet press publishes today speech of Kalinin made in Leningrad on June 20 to his electorate. After reviewing achievements of Soviet Union in many fields Kalinin made the following remarks with reference to the United States:
“Comrades we are still without a doubt considerably poorer than the United States of America. That is a fact which we will not deny. They have many more automobiles alone than we have. But in America the owners of all these riches are Morgan and other capitalists and we are poor but the owners of all that we have are the working class and the peasantry.”
In discussing the relations of the Soviet Union to the rest of the world Kalinin, after emphasizing the fact of the “capitalistic encirclement”, stated that “therefore we must further strengthen the power of our country; we must strengthen the world of socialism and weaken the world which is hostile to us” and that “our enemy is the capitalist world”.