740.00119 Control (Rumania)/12–444
The American Representative in Rumania (Berry) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 20.]
Sir: I have the honor to report upon the attitude of the Soviet authorities, both military and civil, towards the Allied Control Commission. Briefly, the Soviet Command appears to consider the Allied Control Commission as an instrument for carrying into effect the will of the Soviet authorities in Rumania, and as such, little regard has been given in the past to the American and British representation on that Commission.
The impression that the Soviet authorities consider the Allied Control Commission their own agency and their own responsibility was not as aggressively marked a month ago as it is today. At that time the attention of the Soviet members of the Commission was taken by pressing military matters. They were primarily concerned with securing adequate supplies for the Second Ukrainian Army fighting in Hungary. Thus, they did not seek to implement several terms of the armistice, among them Article 11 dealing with reparations. A month ago it was also impossible formally to constitute the Commission as all the delegations had not arrived in Rumania. Consequently, no operational organization then was involved.
The British Commissioner, Air Vice Marshal Stevenson, when he came to Rumania, felt handicapped in attempting to discuss problems [Page 276] or to introduce organizational proposals since the Russians preferred to hold matters in abeyance, saying that the American member of the Commission had not arrived. Therefore, meetings between the Air Vice Marshal and General Vinogradov, the Deputy for the President, Marshal Malinovsky, who was at the Hungarian front, were all in the nature of private conversations. When a slightly more official cast was desired, General Vasiliev, Chief of Staff to General Vinogradov, was also present. Thus, with the Soviet authorities devoting their attention to the military aspects of the Armistice, which of course concerned primarily the Soviet and Rumanian authorities, other questions did not arise as direct issues until towards the end of October, when the Soviet military authorities began seizing the reserve equipment of oil companies, American and British as well as Rumanian, operating in the Ploesti area.
On November 2 a Note was delivered to the Rumanian Government in the name of the Allied Control Commission wherein the Soviet authorities criticized the execution of the Armistice terms. Then, with the seizure of the oil equipment reserves, we began to have a clearer indication of the Soviet attitude of the role of the Allied Control Commission. In these instances the British Commissioner was not informed of the decisions taken by the Commission.
With the arrival of the Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Andrei Vishinsky, about November 8, General Vinogradov seems for all practical purposes to have been superseded as head of the Soviet official mission in Rumania inasmuch as Mr. Vishinsky undertook, and has carried on, the negotiations with the Rumanian Government for the payment of reparations under Article 11 of the Armistice.
American news correspondents now in Bucharest have told me that references to the work of the Allied Control Commission are deleted from their despatches, even to the point where, in one instance, a quotation of the text of Article 18 of the Armistice and its Annex, describing the duty of the Commission, was deleted. The censorship is Soviet, attached to and acting in the name of the Allied Control Commission. Then when General Schuyler, the American representative upon the Commission, arrived in Bucharest a few days ago, the local newspapers were permitted to print only a statement of his arrival and that was very inconspicuously placed.
In short, conversations held during November by members of the staff of this Mission and other Americans, with members of the Soviet staff attached to the Armistice Commission left no doubt in our minds that the Soviet authorities consider that the full executive authority of the Commission rests in their hands, the other members being little [Page 277] more than observers of the action taken by the President or Vice President in the name of the Commission.
Respectfully yours,