Office of the Historian

760D.61/1386: Telegram

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, April 8, 1940—1 p.m.
[Received April 8—8:20 a.m.]

359. Embassy’s telegram 136, February 4, noon.19 A circular note from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs announces that in view of the conclusion of a treaty of peace between the Soviet Union and the Finnish Republic and the cessation of military operations between them “the blockade of the coast of Finland and the waters adjacent to it, announced in the Commissariat’s notes of December 7, 1939, and February 3, 1940, has been discontinued.”20

Thurston
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. The Soviet Union had declared a blockade of the entire Bothnian coast of Finland and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Finland. The Finns considered this blockade as contrary to law, because the Soviet Union insisted that it was not at war with Finland, and because the Soviet Union was incapable of maintaining an effective blockade in accordance with the principle laid down in the Declaration of Paris of April 16, 1856. For text of the Declaration, see British and Foreign State Papers, vol. xlvi, p. 26, or Sir Edward Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty (London, 1875), vol. ii, p. 1282.↩