124.60M/29: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:33 p.m.]
1053. Lozovski handed to me this afternoon the reply of the Soviet Government to my note of August 14 (Department’s 436, August 12 [13] 5 p.m.) regarding the closing of our missions and consulates in Kaunas, Riga and Tallinn. When the Soviet reply had been read to me in English translation I stated that I would not attempt to discuss its contents and that I had nothing to add to the expressions of my Government’s views as set forth in my recent notes and in the public statement made some time ago by Mr. Sumner Welles. To this Lozovski replied that he likewise had nothing further to say adding that the situation is one in which the Soviet Government and the Government of the United States hold conflicting views.
As a precaution in view of the ambiguous nature of the last paragraph of the Soviet note I cited Valkov’s oral statement yesterday to Ward and said that I understood that the note does not alter the date September 5th as that of the limit within which our offices in the Baltic area can continue to operate. Lozovski stated that my understanding in this respect is correct.
The Soviet note which is dated August 22nd reads as follows:
“With reference to the note dated August 14, 1940 of the Chargé d’Affaires of the United States of America in Moscow, Mr. Thurston, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs has the honor to make the following statement: The Soviet Government cannot accept the statement contained in the above mentioned note of Mr. Thurston concerning the non-recognition of the legality of the acts of the free expression of the will of the peoples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as the result of which Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia entered into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the suggestion of the Soviet Government concerning the closing of the American missions in Tallinn, Riga and Kaunas and the termination of the activities of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian missions and consulates in the United States and does not consider it possible to discuss with the Government of the United States the question of the legality of these acts which were the free expression of the sovereign will of the peoples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The note of Mr. Thurston is all the more inexplicable since it is well known that the Government of the United States has more than once through its official representatives expressed its objection to the separation of the above-mentioned Baltic countries from Russia considering without doubt that such a separation does not correspond to the interests of the peoples of Russia at present the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. [Page 428] Thus in the note to the Italian Ambassador of August 10th, 1920, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, Colby, announced:27 ‘The continued refusal to recognize the Baltic States as separate nations independent of Russia.’ The Secretary of State, Hughes, in a letter to the plenipotentiary representative of the United States in Riga, Young, dated July 25, 1922,28 made a statement of the Government of the United States on the question of the recognition of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in which it was stated that ‘the United States of America has consistently affirmed that the disturbed conditions of Russian affairs cannot serve as an excuse for the alienation of Russian territory and does not consider that this principle is violated by the recognition at the present time of the Governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which were established and supported by the local population.’
In connection with the foregoing it is incomprehensible that in contradiction to the above-mentioned declarations of the Government of the United States at the present time the Government of the United States considered it possible to object to the reunion of the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with the peoples of the Soviet Union which occurred as a result of the unanimous decision of the legislative organs of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics elected on the basis of the broadest democratic principles.
The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has noted the statement of the Chargé d’Affaires of the United States, Mr. Thurston, contained in his personal note of August 14, 1940 addressed to the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Molotov, that the Government of the United States intends to close the above mentioned missions and consulates in the near future and expects that the liquidation of the aforesaid missions and consulates will be effected within the period established by the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
- Foreign Relations, 1920, vol. iii, pp. 463, 465. The quotation here retranslated into English is not identical with the original text.↩
- Ibid., 1922, vol. ii, p. 873. The quotation here retranslated into English is not identical with the original text.↩