702.05/8–1448
The Embassy of the Soviet Union to the Department of State
Translation
The Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics presents its compliments to the Department of State and has the honor to communicate the following.
On August 12, 1948 at 4:20 p. m., two New York City policemen, taking advantage of the fact that employees of the Consulate General had opened the door to the yard of the building occupied by the Consulate General, into which O. S. Kasyenkina had jumped from a window, arbitrarily burst into the interior of the building of the Consulate General. At 4:30 p. m., four New York police inspectors, with Assistant Chief Inspector of Police, Conrad Rotingast [Rothengast], at their head, arrived at the Consulate General seeking an explanation of the circumstances of Kasyenkina’s attempt at suicide from the Consul General, Y. M. Lomakin. However, instead of engaging the Consul General in conversation, the police inspectors, in spite of his protest, forcibly grabbed and took with them a personal letter of Kasyenkina’s which was in her personal suitcase.1 These same persons attempted to make a search of Kasyenkina’s room and conduct an interrogation of employees of the Consulate General.
By such actions the representatives of the New York police authorities have violated the extraterritoriality of the building of the Consulate General of the USSR in New York, the inviolability of which [Page 1044] stems from international practice and the rules of international law. In connection with the above, the Embassy of the USSR in the USA enters a protest with the Department of State against the violation of the extraterritoriality of the building of the Consulate General of the USSR in New York by representatives of US authority and insists that the persons guilty of this violation be brought to account. The Embassy of the USSR in the USA insists likewise that the persons who allowed as well the other illegal activities mentioned above be brought to account. The Embassy of the USSR in the USA hopes that the Department of State will undertake measures for safeguarding the Consulate General in the future from illegal acts of the New York police authorities and will guarantee the extraterritoriality of the building of the Consulate General of the USSR in New York.
- This short, second letter dated June 10, 1948, had been written by Mrs. Kasenkina to a close personal friend, Varvara Markovna Panchenko, in Moscow. A photostatic copy of this letter is on file under 702.6111/9–2048. In an interview on September 9, 1948, at the Roosevelt Hospital with officers of the New York city Police Department, Mrs. Kasenkina recognized from the photostatic copy that she had written the letter. She stated that she had left it oil a table in her apartment, having neglected to mail it. (702.6111/9–1048) See also footnote 1, p. 1049.↩