861.4054/4–547: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Smith) to the Secretary of State
1203. Recent Soviet decree prohibiting marriage by Soviet citizens to foreigners1 and Stalin’s subsequent statement to Bevin2 that (today released to press) Soviet citizens already married to foreigners would not be permitted to leave USSR sharply illuminates one totalitarian aspect of Soviet system. They reveal an attitude on part of Soviet state towards its citizens reminiscent of relation between feudal lord and serfs.
This revelation does not of course come as surprise to those who have been dealing with question of Soviet wives. Vyshinski defined basis of this attitude in conversation with Maxwell Hamilton3 (Moscow desp 520, May 31, 19444). In essence Vyshinski stated that Soviet Government considers that every Soviet citizen had an obligation to discharge to the state and that no citizen would be permitted to shirk that obligation by expatriating himself and going abroad. He gave no [Page 723] hint when if ever a Soviet citizen might be considered to have discharged his servitude to the state.
Soviet propaganda has heretofore sought to conceal from west this relationship between the state and the individual. But new decree and Stalin’s statement now expose for all who care to read falseness of Soviet pretensions that Soviet system exists for common man and make it clear that the individual in even his most personal relations is subject to will of the state.
- This decree of February 15 had been signed by Nikolay Mikhailovich Shvernik and Alexander Fedorovich Gorkin, the Chairman and the Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union.↩
- Ernest Bevin, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩
- Maxwell M. Hamilton, Counselor of Embassy with honorary rank of Minister in the Soviet Union.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. iv, p. 877.↩