711.61/891½
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Soviet Ambassador called to see me this afternoon in order to say good-by before he left. The Ambassador said he wanted to talk with me completely off the record and asked that no official record be made of this conversation.
The Ambassador said that he had told me in an earlier conversation which we had had some two weeks ago of the insuperable difficulties which he had encountered in carrying out his mission in Washington as a result of the lack of any effective contact with his own Government. He said the real truth of the matter was that the very confidential and apparently influential relationship which he had enjoyed with Stalin until 193965 was non-existent today. He said that his successor as Foreign Commissar had removed from the Foreign Commissariat every important official who had any experience with the outside world and any personal knowledge of the United States or of the Western democracies. He did not believe that his messages were received by Stalin—in any event none of his recommendations had been adopted, and he himself was completely bereft of any information as to the policy or plans of his own Government. He said that he had even been forbidden by his Government to appear in public or to make any public speeches.
The result of this situation, the Ambassador said, was that the Soviet Union was misinterpreted to the people of the United States and he was shorn of any power to attempt to remedy that situation.
The Ambassador emphasized in very clearcut and blunt terms the fact that Stalin was entirely unaware of the fact that public opinion in the United States was a determining factor in the creation of governmental policy. He himself had time and again tried to persuade him that public opinion must be reckoned with, but Stalin had apparently paid no attention whatever to the recommendations which he had sent in this regard.
Mr. Litvinov then went on to say that in his judgment the future peace of the world depended very largely upon understanding and cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States. He said that without the achievement of this, he did not believe that any international organizaton was conceivable or that the peace of the world could possibly be maintained. He said that the way things were now going, he did not see any prospect of the achievement of [Page 523] that kind of understanding and cooperation. He said it was for this reason that he had insisted that he be permitted to return to Moscow where he intended to do his utmost to persuade Stalin that the policy which Mr. Litvinov had in mind should be followed in the interest of the Soviet Union itself. He said he was far from optimistic as to the outcome of his impending mission and that he doubted very much that he would be permitted to return to Washington.
I told the Ambassador that I was very deeply impressed by what he had said to me. I said I hoped that his mission would prove to be successful since I shared in very large measure the views which he had expressed to me. I said I did not have to reiterate to him the views which I knew the President had already expressed to him, namely, the President’s desire to meet with and to talk personally with Stalin. I said I hoped that arrangements could be made. The Ambassador said that he was in the highest degree doubtful that this arrangement could be carried out. He said the trouble in Russia today was that everything centered in one individual, namely, Stalin himself. He said it was in his mind inconceivable that Stalin could absent himself from Moscow for more than three days as a maximum period, and that the President’s view that a place for meeting could be set which would only require Stalin’s absence from Moscow for seven days was erroneous since Mr. Litvinov thought that more than that time would inevitably be required and that even the seven days mentioned by the President was, he feared, beyond the power of Stalin to work out.
The Ambassador had no knowledge, at least so he said, of the views of his Government with regard to the post-war period with regard to international organization or with regard to territorial questions. He spoke of his own individual views with regard to the post-war period, especially in connection with the kind of government which must be established in the European countries if a peaceful world was to be obtained. He said it seemed to him that the United Nations, if a United Nations organization could be set up, would have to demand the exclusion from governments in Europe of fascist-minded, anti-democratic individuals. I said that if this thesis was carried out, its logical conclusion would seem to me to be that this would give rise to continued intervention by the major powers of the United Nations organization in the internal affairs of every one of the smaller powers. I said I did not have to remind the Ambassador of the strong opposition on the part of the American Government and people to the acceptance of the thesis that foreign intervention in the domestic concerns of other peoples was admissible. I said of course it was the view of this Government that the civilized world could not again agree to permit the creation in any nation of the type of government [Page 524] which we now saw in Germany, in Italy and in Japan but that I thought that objective could be reached in other ways and that I personally had much faith in the benefits which would be derived from the establishment of the principle that all nations members of a United Nations organization must be privileged to afford their peoples the right of free speech, of free assembly, of freedom of worship and of freedom of information. It seemed to me, I said, that these safeguards would in all human probability make it impossible for the inhabitants of any nation to follow the course which the German people had followed in the last ten years. I was somewhat surprised to have the Ambassador reply that he believed his Government would be wholly in accord with the establishment of some general principle of this character. He added that he believed the trend of events in the Soviet Union lay in that direction insofar as the Soviet Government itself was concerned. He emphasized the fact that the Soviet constitution was in a true sense of the word an exceedingly democratic constitution.
When the Ambassador left I told him I hoped very sincerely that he would return to Washington and that the outcome of his efforts in Moscow would be wholly successful.
- For correspondence concerning the replacement on May 3, 1939, of Litvinov by Molotov as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, see Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 757–761.↩