Office of the Historian

File No. 861.00/1985

The Ambassador in Russia (Francis) to the Secretary of State

[Telegram]
Vologda, May 21 [31], 1918, 6 p.m.
[Received June 9, 12.14 p.m.]

229. Your circular, 29th,1 forwarded Consulate General with instruction informally to advise Chicherin but not officially as I have had no official communication with Soviet government.

Circular probably distasteful as Trotsky has issued order to disarm Czecho-Slovaks and kill if they refuse including therein prohibition of transportation with severe penalty to railroad employees who ignore.

Reported body Czech soldiers declined to be disarmed and have taken station near Ekaterinburg on Siberian Railway which is refusing to sell tickets beyond Vyatka.

Embassy attaché sent for information reports Czecho-Slovaks have effected union with Dutov2 and surrounded Ekaterinburg; his informant who is government employee but anti-Bolshevik told Embassy representative that Soviet power hangs on a [hair] and on first manifestation of Allied intervention Soviet government will be overturned and he ended conversation with, “Why are not Allies taking definite action?”

Francis

  1. Circular telegram, May 29, 1918 (File No. 763.72/10103):

    The Secretary of State has made public the following announcement: “The Secretary of State desires to announce that the proceedings of the congress of oppressed races of Austria-Hungary, which was held in Rome in April, have been followed with great interest by the Government of the United States, and that the nationalistic aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs for freedom have the earnest sympathy of this Government.”

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  2. Ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks.↩