861.00 Supreme Soviet/30: Telegram

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

341. My 337, March 19 [29], 11 a.m. [10 p.m.]. In its leading editorial yesterday devoted to Molotov’s speech on foreign policy Pravda asserted that this address indicated that Soviet foreign policy continues to carry out the four tasks outlined by Stalin in his speech to the Eighteenth Party Congress.41 The editorial selected for quotation Molotov’s statement that “the new good Soviet-German relations have been put to the test in connection with the events in Poland and have sufficiently demonstrated their firmness” as well as his “warning to the English and French ruling classes that the Soviet Union had never violated [a treaty?] and never would be an instrument for [Page 194] the policy of others.” After quoting Molotov’s assertion that the conflict with Finland had not been with that country alone but with the united forces of a number of imperialist countries hostile to the Soviet Union including the reference to the help received from the “peace loving” United States, the editorial points out that Molotov indicated that those anti-Soviet plans had not been abandoned in imperialist circles and mentioned the projected defensive alliance in Scandinavia and the “suspicious hullabaloo” in regard to the Near East. In this connection it stated “Comrade Molotov warned those of our neighbors who might let themselves be drawn into this dangerous game of playing with fire and becoming instruments of an agressive policy against the Soviet Union.”

Resolutions of approval of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as outlined by Molotov which have been adopted at meetings throughout the country likewise emphasize “the miscalculations of the British and French imperialists” who hoped to use the Soviet Union as an “instrument for their criminal policy.”

Thurston
  1. Held in Moscow, March 10–21, 1939; for an account of Stalin’s speech on March 10, see telegram No. 99, March 11, 1939, 4 p.m., from the Chargé in the Soviet Union, Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, p. 739, and despatch No. 2213, March 30, 1939, from the Chargé, ibid., p. 747.