124.60I3/45: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received 12:30 p.m.]
1104. My telegram No. 1103, September 2, 5 p.m. A formal note was received last night from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in reply to a communication from the Embassy dated August 26, stating that the employees of the American Mission at Tallinn are Soviet citizens and that the question of their departure from the Soviet Union to any other country is to be decided by the Workers and Peasants Militsiya. I assume that this note was drafted prior to my conversation with Lozovski.
I have today received a telegram from Ward, however, stating that the Soviet Legation in Tallinn has been instructed by Moscow to examine the applications filed by the Estonian clerks and their families and that the Legation has indicated that a decision on their cases may be reached at an early date. I have had no word from Gufler regarding the alien clerks at his mission. I mentioned them specifically in my talk yesterday with Lozovski.