Office of the Historian

125.0061/273

Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Henderson)80

[Washington,] May 18, 1943.

You will note that although we permit Soviet consular officers including those in California to travel freely the Soviet Government continues to refuse to permit our Consul General in Vladivostok81 to travel outside that city except on trips to the Embassy in Moscow or Kuibyshev.

Prior to June 22, 1941 we had established a regime of reciprocity with regard to treatment of consular officers. Upon the insistence of Ambassador Oumansky82 in July 1941 restrictions upon the travel of Soviet consular officers in this country were unconditionally lifted.83 Our generous gesture has not had any effect, it will be noted, upon the Soviet authorities and their treatment of our consular officers in the Soviet Union.

L[oy] W. H[enderson]
  1. Addressed to the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Atherton) and the Adviser on Political Relations (Dunn).↩
  2. Angus I. Ward.↩
  3. Konstantin Alexandrovich Umansky was Soviet Ambassador in the United States, 1939–42.↩
  4. The adoption of the policy of reciprocity in the control of travel is explained in telegrams No. 991, May 17, 1941, from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, No. 745, May 28, 1941, to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, and the note of June 7, 1941, to the Soviet Ambassador, Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, pp. 881 and 883. The removal of travel restrictions by the United States was announced in a note of July 23, 1941, to Ambassador Umansky, ibid., p. 902. Some further information on this subject is printed in Department of State Bulletin, October 24, 1948, p. 525, and ibid., March 24, 1952, p. 452.↩