Office of the Historian

Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 203

No. 392
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs (Thurston)

confidential
Berlin, January 30, 1954.
  • Participants: Mr. Semenov, Soviet High Commissioner in Germany
  • Mr. Thurston
  • Mr. Lustgarten, interpreter

During the break in today’s meeting Mr. Lustgarten asked me if I would like to meet Mr. Semenov, who was standing nearby and after I was introduced to him, we had a short and not particularly revealing conversation. Mr. Semenov opened up by asking where I had come from and when I told him, he asked me whether I was working in German Affairs. When I told him that my duties pertained to Eastern European Affairs, he replied that that was not very far away from Germany. I answered that I too could see a close relationship between Germany and the problems of Eastern Europe. He apparently thought this had unintended implications of some kind and replied that he could offer no opinion on my observation, since he thought that the people of each country should be concerned only with their own affairs. I told him that I had expected his reply to be that there was also a close connection between Germany and the problems of Western Europe, but that I agreed 100% with his statement about people handling their own affairs. He continued on the theme that there should be no interference in any form by one country in the affairs of another. I said that we had reached rather rapid agreement on this point in principle and that the only problem was whether actions on the part of given parties were to be described as “interference” or “cooperation”. His reaction to this comment was that no matter what I said, he did not believe in interference in other people’s affairs. When I repeated that this was a principle on which we both were apparently in hearty agreement, he said that that was a good omen and should afford a foundation for agreement here in Berlin.

I picked up his reference to Berlin to say that it was not far from here that the American and Soviet armies had met almost nine years ago and that the times indeed seemed ripe for such agreement. At the mention of armies he told me that he had been present when the two armies met and that he was the political adviser to General Konef at that time. He said he remembered meeting General Bradley at that time.