Office of the Historian

861.111/11–549

The Chargé of the Soviet Union (Bazykin) to the Under Secretary of State (Webb)

Washington, November 5, 1949.

[Translation]

No. 136

Sir: The Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics acknowledges receipt of your note of October 28, 19491 containing the request that the Department of State be informed relative to the intentions of the Soviet Government on the question of the replacement of the American clergyman, A. Laberge, who served in a church on Malaya Lubyanka Street in Moscow and who has departed from the Soviet Union, by another American clergyman, J. Brassard.

In connection with this note the Embassy states that the question set forth in the note relates exclusively to the competence of the properly registered society of believers of the given church.

According to the Embassy’s information, the society of believers has already invited another priest who actually is serving in the mentioned church at the present time.

It goes without saying that there will be no objection to the travel [Page 671] to Moscow of Mr. Brassard if he is traveling in order to serve the personnel of the Embassy of the USA.2

Accept [etc]

Bazykin
  1. The note of October 28, 1949, not printed, from Under Secretary of State Webb to the Chargé of the Soviet Union Vladimir Ivanovich Bazykin recited the long delay of over 8 months in the issuance of an entry visa to Father Brassard to go to the Soviet Union as replacement for Father Laberge. The interest of the Department in this visa application was again stressed, and the note closed with the request to “be provided with an early indication of the Soviet Government’s intentions in the matter.” (861.111/7–1449)↩
  2. Father Brassard did not succeed Father Laberge. A French Catholic priest, Father Jean de Matha Thomas, who was the assistant to Father Laberge, supplied some services until his own expulsion in August 1950, but was much circumscribed in the exercise of his functions and church control by acts of the Soviet Government. See the account by former Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow (Philadelphia and New York, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1950), pp. 277–279.↩