800.00 Summaries/7t: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)
150. The Department desires to give you these additional thoughts for your background information in considering recent developments at Moscow. We are naturally much disturbed at the Soviet Government’s present method of approach to Polish problems and the much wider implications as to future Soviet policy. If the Soviet Government does not, in fact, intend to return to the doctrine of unilateralism as a fixed policy which we thought and hoped had been renounced at the Moscow and Tehran Conferences, then that Government has failed to make clear its position in recent statements emanating from Moscow. It has thus thrown itself open to critics in this country and elsewhere to place their own interpretation on Soviet policy and to charge a complete reversal of attitude since the Four-Nation Declaration at Moscow.49 Specifically, present Russian insistence on an almost complete reconstitution of the Polish Government in exile with persons of its own choosing as an essential prerequisite to any direct discussions of mutual problems is an approach which American public opinion will not understand. Large elements of our people who [Page 1235] recognize that there is a complicated Russian-Polish boundary question requiring full and frank discussion, will not accept as valid the Russian contention that only after imposing a government of its own selection on Poland will it be prepared for direct exchange of views. The overwhelming majority of our people, as you know, welcomed with enthusiasm the broad principle of international cooperation laid down at the Moscow and Tehran Conferences and it seems to us of the highest importance that faith in this groundwork should not be undermined by any course of unilateral action. As you well know, without the whole-hearted support of public opinion, this great movement toward international cooperation cannot be transformed into a solid practical basis for the establishment of a stable and durable peace. Unfortunately, public opinion in the United States has been confused and upset by Pravda’s reply to Mr. Willkie’s article and more recently by that journal’s publishing of reports of British attempts to negotiate a separate peace. These two incidents have to some degree already dampened the spirit of hope and confidence which was born with the Moscow Conference and stimulated and confirmed at Tehran; they have played into the hands of those skeptical elements in this country who have continued to insist that “you can’t do business with Russia”.
It is vitally important that the Soviet Government be brought to understand that the faith of the people of this country in the workability of any international security organization with the Soviet Union as a full and cooperating member depends upon the willingness of the Russian Government to abandon unilateralism and to seek its ends by free and frank discussion with a Polish Government that is not hand-picked. Opinion in this country will not understand how such direct talks would involve the relinquishment of any Russian rights nor would our Government wish to suggest a course of action which would prejudice such rights; the unwillingness to hold such talks without demanding the substitution of the present Polish Government for one of its own choosing—as the Soviet Government is now insisting—will inevitably be interpreted by a large section of American opinion as a significant step backward in the direction of power politics and spheres of influence. We believe the Soviet Government must realize how serious the effect of this will be upon our public opinion and upon Congress in respect of the cooperation of this country in any international system of world security.
Your telegrams nos. 213 and 21450 have just been received and the analysis and presentation of the problems contained therein are much appreciated. A further telegram will be sent in reply thereto.
- Signed on October 30, 1943, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. i, p. 755.↩
- Latter not printed, but see footnote 48, p. 1233.↩