Office of the Historian

711.01/823: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

[Extract]12
Moscow, July 5, 1941—6 p.m.
[Received July 6—3:20 p.m.]

1296.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2.
Lozovski then remarked that the Soviet naval authorities had raised some question as to the necessity for four American Naval Attachés, but when I explained to him that two of them were concerned primarily with naval aviation, he seemed satisfied and said that he would explain this situation to the Soviet naval authorities. Insofar as concerns the stationing of one of these Attachés at Vladivostok, he said that he could not give me any reply as yet and that this was the only subject which I had brought up that “was exceedingly delicate”.
3.
He was not yet prepared to give me a reply as to the mutual removal of travel restrictions.
4.
He agreed to a further increase in the number of circulation cards to be issued to the officers of the Embassy (the issuance of which I am now satisfied is being blocked only by bureaucratic red tape) and said that he had again cautioned the censor to relax the severe restrictions governing the despatches of the American correspondents.
5.
Lozovski also said that he had issued peremptory instructions to the telegraph authorities that radio messages to and from the Embassy receive priority.
6.
Inasmuch as the French Ambassador13 and the members of his staff are held incommunicado in the Embassy building, I requested Lozovski to transmit to Bergery the substance of the Department’s [Page 894] No. 861, July 1,14 which he agreed to do. I also handed him for delivery to the Counselor of the French Embassy15 a personal telegram received by me from his wife, who is in Stockholm.
7.
Insofar as concerns the renewed request for Majors Yeaton and Michela to visit the front, Lozovski said that no decision had been arrived at but that it was his intention to discuss the matter further with the Soviet military authorities.
Steinhardt
  1. The first section of this telegram is printed on p. 981.↩
  2. Gaston Bergery.↩
  3. This telegram explained that it would be impossible for the American Embassy in Moscow to undertake the representation of French interests in the Soviet Union, after the break in their relations of June 30, 1941. For correspondence on the relations of the Soviet Union with Great Britain and France, see pp. 155 ff.↩
  4. Jean Payart.↩