Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Volume III

800.00B Communist International/242: Telegram

The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State

[Extracts]

London, May 24, 1943—midnight.
[Received May 24—11:59 p.m.]

3577. Personal to the Secretary. We inquired of Sir Alexander Cadogan⁹⁴ this afternoon his impressions with regard to the dissolution of the Comintern. The British, he said, had had no previous indication that such a move was under contemplation nor had any suggestions been made by them that the “chloroforming” of the Comintern would be constructive. He considers Saturday’s announcement, however, as a highly important step in the right direction: while there is of course no guarantee that the Comintern may not be revived or something similar set up in the future should it suit Russian purposes, the interment at this time of this widely hated and sinister organization must be interpreted as a sign of a real desire on the part of Stalin and his Government to cooperate with friendly countries in the reconstruction of Europe. The skeptics may say that the Comintern was dead anyway but he feels that Moscow’s gesture is of real significance as a symbol of Russian desire publicly to renounce any subversive aims in the post war era. Cadogan likewise feels that to the extent the Comintern in its early aims for world wide revolution represented a measure of defense in a military sense, so its dissolution is a sign of Russian confidence in themselves and a feeling that this dubious and outworn weapon is no longer needed. He thought the Times editorial this morning (Embassy’s telegram No. 3566, 24th⁹⁵) was a good summing up of the significance of the step.

Clark Kerr has telegraphed, Cadogan went on, that the reasons behind Saturday’s announcement were internal as well as external. As to the former, it represented a desire on the part of those connected with the Comintern, now long languishing and ignored, to give themselves the satisfaction of a dramatic and dignified suicide. It was a recognition on their part too that their organization had no visible future in a world where Russian patriotism and a new won self-confidence is to mean frank cooperation on the basis of equality with other nations and not a resort to backstairs endeavors to attain Russian ends by international sabotage and revolution.

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

During our conversation⁹⁶ I asked him about the dissolution of the Comintern. He told me that the action had been agreed upon before Ambassador Davies reached Moscow.⁹⁷ He said that Lenin’s⁹⁸ reason for forming the International in 1919 was due to two motivations: (1), the action of the governments against Russia following the cessation of hostilities in 1918 and, (2), a genuine belief in a world wide revolutionary movement and a desire on the part of the Russians to provide a general staff to guide that movement. Maisky told me that the movement had been practically moribund for the last half dozen years, that the 1935 meeting of the International in Moscow would not have been called if it had not been for Ambassador Bullitt’s⁹⁹ violent objection to the meeting which was resented by the Russians and resulted in contrary action. He told me that when he was in Moscow at the time of Eden’s visit a year ago last Christmas the question was under discussion but no decision had been reached. He said that Stalin and his advisers had realized that a Nationalist world was more complicated than had been originally thought, that the setting up of a headquarters staff which attempted to establish cooperative action in such widely different areas as Africa and the Balkans and China and South America made difficulties for their nationalist government which were impossible to coordinate and which injured rather than helped the Soviet Union. He hoped that the discontinuance of the Comintern would have a favorable reaction both in the United States and in the British Empire. I told him I thought that although there were skeptics in both the United States and Britain the general consensus of opinion in both countries would react favorably to the Russian position. His chief concern was the establishment of a second front across the Channel based on England.

Winant

94. British Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs since 1938.
95. Not printed.
96. Ambassador Winant had luncheon at noon on May 24 with the Soviet Ambassador, Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky.
97. Joseph B. Davies visited Moscow May 19–29, 1943, on a special mission for President Roosevelt; see pp. 646–661, passim.
98. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov), leader of the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, and President of the Council of People’s Commissars of the subsequent Soviet government until his death on January 21, 1924.
99. William C. Bullitt, Ambassador in the Soviet Union, 1933–36. For correspondence regarding his attitude before the opening of the VII Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1935, see Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 220–228.