Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, General, The Soviet Union, Volume I

701.6111/1013

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador of the Soviet Union (Umansky)

Washington, June 10, 1941.

Excellency: I have the honor to inform you that it has come to the attention of this Government that Colonel Pavel F. Berezin and Major Constantine Ovchinnikov, Assistant Military Attachés for Air of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at Washington, have been making use of their diplomatic status to obtain confidential military information in this country in an improper manner.⁵⁹ Although their attention has been politely and repeatedly invited to infractions on their part of the regulations of the War Department prescribing the means by which military information should be obtained and the manner in which visits to military establishments should be arranged, they have continued to fail to observe these regulations.

In view of the manner in which Colonel Berezin and Major Ovchinnikov have consistently disregarded the regulations of the War Department, I am impelled to notify Your Excellency that these officers are persona non grata to this Government as Assistant Military Attachés for Air of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at Washington, and to request that they be immediately withdrawn from the United States by Your Excellency’s Government.

The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will no doubt realize that the Government of the United States has, in view of all the circumstances, no alternative course.⁶⁰

Accept [etc.]

Cordell Hull

59. In his letter of June 2, 1941, to the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, concluded: “It is believed that the repeated attempts of these Soviet officers, working under the protection and with the aid of their diplomatic status, ‘to obtain confidential military information in an illegal and surreptitious manner’ is adequate grounds for requesting their recall, should the Department of State consider such an action advisable.”
60. The full substance of this note was sent to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union in telegram No. 777, June 10, 1941, wherein it was further stated that, if the Soviet Government resorted to reprisals, the number of Soviet Military and Naval Attachés would be placed “on a reciprocal basis.” (701.6111/1014a)