860J.111/4–2147

The Department of State to the Embassy of the Soviet Union

The Department of State has received the note of April 21, 1947 from the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in which the assistance of the Department of State is requested in connection with the emigration of Armenians from the United States to the Soviet Union. It is presumed that some of the prospective emigrants in question are American citizens.

American citizens, or alien residents of the United States except German or Japanese nationals, who desire to emigrate to the Soviet Union are freely permitted to do so. No exit visas are required, and such emigrants are at liberty to take their personal property with them. American citizens may voluntarily relinquish their American citizenship by making a formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign country in accordance with the laws thereof.

While the Government of the United States will interpose no objections to the departure of persons of Armenian origin from the United States to the Soviet Union, it cannot fail to bring to the attention of the Embassy two categories of persons in the Soviet Union who, notwithstanding all their personal efforts and the repeated representations of the American Embassy in Moscow, have not been permitted to leave the Soviet Union for the United States. The first category consists of persons with claims to American citizenship who have been forcibly removed to the Soviet Union from various countries of Eastern Europe. [Page 729] All efforts of the American Embassy in Moscow to obtain permission to interview these people with a view to establishing their American citizenship and arranging for their return to the United States have been fruitless. The second category of persons consists of a relatively small number of Soviet women married to American citizens who for many months, and in several cases years, have sought permission to leave the Soviet Union in order to join their husbands in the United States. The continued refusal of the Soviet authorities to permit the departure of these wives of American citizens is incomprehensible to the Government and the people of the United States.1

In assuring the Embassy that no difficulties will be experienced by persons of Armenian origin in the United States who desire to emigrate to the Soviet Union, the Department of State requests the favorable consideration of the Soviet Government for the facilitation of the departure to the United States of the two categories of persons mentioned above.

  1. Later in the year an occasion arose which caused the Department of State to release to the press on December 4, both the note of April 21 from the Embassy of the Soviet Union and this reply of May 28. No answer had been received to the latter. In a statement summarizing developments, the Department called attention to the fact that “the number of wives of American citizens who have been denied exit visas from the Soviet Union exceeds 250.” Department of State Bulletin, December 14, 1947, pp. 1194–1195.

    Also by this time the disillusionment of Armenians who had returned from abroad was becoming apparent. The realities of local conditions were strongly at variance with the happiness portrayed in the campaign encouraging the return of Armenians to “their ancestral homeland”. In despatch 173 from Moscow on February 7, 1948, the American Embassy reported that by January it had learned of the distress of 149 of the 151 Armenians who had come back from the United States, of whom only 6 for personal reasons did not already wish to leave. About the invitation to Armenians to return from abroad, see despatch 567 from Moscow on November 29, 1946, Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. vi, p. 814.