Office of the Historian

860H.01/9–1644: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)

Washington, September 16, 1944—2 p.m.

2215. Dept has given the most careful study to the considerations which you raise in your 3404, September 9,47 regarding the question [Page 917] of the visa application of the proposed Moscow delegation to the All-Slav Congress.48 The Soviet Embassy has also taken up the matter with the Department.

The Department appreciates to the full the political purpose of the proposed attendance to the Slavonic Conference in Pittsburgh of the Moscow delegation. It believes that a distinction should be made between the members of the delegation who are Soviet citizens and those who are not. In the case of the former, there appears to be no valid grounds to refuse visas requested by the Soviet Government in order to accept an invitation issued by a private organization in the United States. In the case of the non-Soviet members, however, the same considerations do not apply; since they are not Soviet citizens the Soviet Government is not in a position officially to sponsor their visit.

You are, therefore, authorized to issue official 3(2) visas but not diplomatic visas in any case to the six Soviet members listed in your 3378, September 8.49 In regard to the non-Soviet members you should explain to the Foreign Office that this Government does not feel in a position to grant visitors’ visas to the United States for the two Yugoslavs and one Pole without having had from the Yugoslav and Polish Governments some indication of their approval. You might add that in time of war it is the general rule of the Department not to issue visas for visits to the United States except when such visits are sponsored by the Government of the applicants themselves or occasionally for purely humanitarian reasons which do not apply in the present case.50

With reference to the Soviet group for whom visas are authorized Justice has informed Dept that participation by foreign persons at meetings of this character in the United States would in all probability bring them within the provisions of the Foreign Agents Registration Act51 and thus make them liable to registration as the agents of a foreign principal. You should mention this possibility to the Foreign Office in order that there may be no misunderstanding on their part and explain that it is purely a matter of the existing law of the United States.

Hull
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. The meetings of this second Congress were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, beginning September 23, 1944.↩
  3. Not printed.↩
  4. Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., had pointed out in a memorandum of September 12 that the “Department has steadily taken the position that it did not like foreign governments attempting to organize nationality groups in the United States … or to try to make political use in this country of our great foreign language population.” (860H.01/9–1244)↩
  5. Approved June 8, 1938, 52 Stat. 631; as amended, approved April 29, 1942 (effective June 28, 1942), 56 Stat. 248.↩