740.00119 E W./5–1445: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:07 p.m.]
1563. Personal for Ambassador Harriman. There are several matters connected with our work which are causing me some concern. I am not wiring about them officially for fear that I might unwittingly put statements on record which are counter to your views. I hope you will not mind, however, if I put my thoughts frankly before you in this manner for whatever use you can make of them.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Poland. Steve39 and I get the impression from information telegrams we have received that you and Clark Kerr intend to undertake on your return negotiations looking to direct agreement on the composition of a future Polish Government. From our limited point of vision here we question the advisability of such a move. It seems to us that there could be no better vindication of the correctness, from Russia’s standpoint, of the policies the Soviet Government has followed with respect to Poland since the Crimea Conference [Page 296] than if we were now to take the initiative in reopening talks with them particularly on a basis other than that agreed at the Crimea. We are never going to have at this juncture anything like a free Poland. In the face of this situation, our position today is a clear one on which we can safely rest our case. If we join with the Russians in cooking up some façade government to mask NKVD control (and that is all they would agree to today) and then help them to put it across by recognizing it and sending our representatives there to play their part in the show, all the issues will be confused, and we shall have tacitly given the stamp of approval to the tactics which were followed by the Russians in March and April in connection with the work of the Commission.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- For the portions of this telegram here omitted, dealing with the activities of the Moscow Reparations Commission and the question of the Control Commissions in Bulgaria and Hungary, see vol. iii, p. 1211, and vol. iv, p. 813, respectively.↩
- Presumably, the reference here is to Francis B. Stevens, Second Secretary of Embassy and Vice Consul in Moscow.↩