196.6/1438: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Henderson) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 14—7:29 a.m.]
881. Reference Department’s 384, August 4, 4 p.m. Zarubin informed me that steps have been taken to abolish the practice of giving bonuses or gratuities to American sailors entering Soviet Arctic ports. [Page 655] He said that the Soviet Government in view of existing currency legislation could not, however, furnish rubles to American sailors at diplomatic rates of exchange or at any other than the official rates.
Since the Soviet authorities were genuinely anxious to alleviate conditions they were considering the advisability of furnishing gratis rubles to American merchant officers and seamen arriving in northern ports, rubles in limited fixed amounts which could be used as spending money. For instance, they might give each officer a thousand rubles and each seaman three or four hundred rubles. Any rubles which might be needed in addition should be purchased at official rates. Zarubin said that he felt that this arrangement would not be subjected to the objections which applied to the bonus which was in American dollars—since the rubles would represent merely spending money and would have little or no value outside the Soviet Union.
At his request I promised to inquire whether arrangements of the kind tentatively proposed by him would be objected to by the American Government.92
[Ambassador Standley made his report on the problems and difficulties encountered in the Soviet Union to President Roosevelt, in the presence of Harry Hopkins, on October 22, 1942. No record of this meeting has been found in Department files, or at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y. The Ambassador’s own description of this conversation is printed in his book, Admiral Ambassador to Russia, pages 306–310.]
- Rear Adm. Emory S. Land, War Shipping Administrator, was informed of this proposal by Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long in a letter of October 27, 1942, and his opinion of this arrangement requested. The letter had been shown to Ambassador Standley, who was in Washington, and who concurred.↩