701.60C61/34: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:38 p.m.]
640. The Polish Chargé d’Affaires30 informed the Embassy several days ago that since July 15 practically all the delegates of the Polish Embassy who were handling relief matters in the Soviet Union together with their clerical staff have been arrested by the Soviet authorities. The Polish Embassy has already been informed of the arrest of its delegates at Ashkhabad, Samarkand, Chelyabinsk, Khimkent, Petropavlovsk and Pavlodar. Furthermore relief stores, archives and seals have been seized.
In answer to the Chargé’s protests on July 20 [19], Vyshinski stated that the arrested delegates in place of fulfilling their duties as [Page 164] defined in the special Polish-Soviet relief agreement31 had been engaged in hostile action vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and had been carrying on intelligence work. For this reason the People’s Commissariat could not permit the delegates to carry on their work in the future and “appropriate instructions have been received by the local organs”.
The Chargé stated that he categorically denied the accusations in question and demanded that the delegates be released not only because of their diplomatic immunity, which the Soviet Government does not admit that they enjoy, but also on the grounds that the measures taken by the Soviet authorities render impossible the indispensable relief work they are carrying on.
The Chargé has subsequently informed me that the six arrested delegates had been released on condition that they leave the Soviet Union immediately but that their clerical personnel was still under detention.
- Henryk Sokolnicki.↩
- See the text, “Rules Governing the Scope of Activities of Delegates of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland,” December 23, 1941, in Republic of Poland, Polish-Soviet Relations, 1918–1943, Official Documents, p. 180. For other official Polish documents and comments on this subject, see ibid., pp. 46–55 and pp. 182–205.↩