861.014/1–2746: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union ( Kennan ) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 27—8:45 a.m.]
247. Tass communiqué concerning Kurils and southern Sakhalin which was put out by Soviet radio last night is published in press for today January 27. Text is as follows:
“On January 22 the Acting Secretary of State of the USA Mr. Acheson stated at a press conference that a secret Yalta agreement of the three Allied Powers had envisaged the granting to the Soviet Union of rights of occupation of the Kuril Islands but that as far as he understood that agreement had not envisaged the final handing over the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union. Mr. Acheson further stated that, ‘this was his opinion although perhaps he was mistaken’.27
Tass is authorized to explain that in the question of the Kuril Islands Mr. Acheson was indeed ‘mistaken’. In the Yalta Agreement of the three powers which was signed on February 11, 1945 by I. V. Stalin on behalf of the Soviet Union, by Mr. Churchill on behalf of Great Britain and by Mr. Roosevelt on behalf of the USA but [not] published at that time for understandable reasons it was clearly stipulated that after the victory over Japan the Kuril Islands would be turned over to the Soviet Union and also that the southern part of the island of Sakhalin and all the islands adjacent thereto should be returned to the Soviet Union.”
- For comment on this agreement by Secretary of State Byrnes at his news conference on January 29, 1946, see Department of State Bulletin, February 10, 1946, pp. 189–190. Comments made by President Truman at his news conference on January 31 are summarized Ibid., p. 190, and are reproduced in full in Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 1946 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1962), pp. 102–105, passim.↩