Moscow Embassy Files—710 Sino-Soviet Relations: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to President Truman
160900. Subsequent to the dispatch of my wire of last night63 I delivered your message to Marshal Stalin personally to Vice Commissar Vyshinski who has been familiar with the negotiations leading up to the Yalta Agreement and with whom I have had several conversations on the subject. I asked him to deliver your message personally at once to Marshal Stalin, to discuss its contents with him, and to tell Marshal Stalin that I was ready to call on him if there was any question about it which he wished to raise. I also asked him to telephone me the reaction of the Marshal.
Vyshinski telephoned me later in the night that Marshal Stalin had asked him to tell me he was satisfied with your message and [Page 906] that he was sending you a reply.64 Vyshinski said that when I saw him today he would give me more details.
I hope you will understand why I was concerned last night. It has been my experience that any deviation from an agreement reached with the Soviets is apt to arouse unforeseeable and unreasonable suspicions. In this matter I have been the only individual whom President Roosevelt used to negotiate Russia’s participation in the war against Japan and the political agreement in connection therewith. I conducted all the conversations with Marshal Stalin leading up to the Yalta Agreement and I was, with the exception of Bohlen, the only one present at the personal conversations between President Roosevelt and Marshal Stalin at Yalta when the agreement was concluded. Because of the definite assurances I had given Marshal Stalin that no approach would be made to the Generalissimo without Stalin’s prior approval, I wanted to make sure that he did not gain some strange impression such as that we were now attempting to force his hand and provoke a Japanese attack by talking prematurely in Chungking.
My conversation last night with Vyshinski certainly did not do any harm and may possibly have prevented some misconception on Stalin’s part.
I am glad that Soong will arrive in Moscow before July 1. As he is sure to get in touch with me when he reaches Moscow, it would be helpful if before then I could be informed of the developments in Chungking.