File No. 861.00/2586
The Consul at Archangel (Cole) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 27.]
Sir: I have the honor to report that during the recent visit to this city of Admiral Kemp, the British senior naval officer in the Arctic Ocean, word was received by the local authorities here, through the master of a Russian vessel just returned to Archangel from Kem, that what the local authorities deemed violations of Russian sovereignty had been committed by the British military and naval authorities along the Murman Railroad and on the west coast of the White Sea. Among these alleged acts was the shooting of three members of the Kem County Council of Workmen’s Deputies. Admiral Kemp immediately departed for the west coast of the White Sea (Kandalaksha) to investigate, as he stated nothing of the kind could have been done under the orders given by him to the captain of H. M. S. Attentive, then in the region mentioned (Kandalaksha, Kem, Soroka). With the Admiral, on a Russian vessel, went two members of the Archangel Soviet Executive Committee.
After the return of the members of the local committee it has been represented in the local papers that the three men were arrested during a meeting of the Soviet and then taken out and summarily shot. In the meantime there is no other version of the affair authoritatively current nor are the Allies in this city able to contradict the above version due to the oversight in not sending representatives from the Allied consulates or military mission of Archangel to Kem with the members of the local executive committee.
I have suggested to the British and French Consuls that it is not now too late to send such representatives, if a permit to leave the city for Kem should be granted, to go to the scene of the alleged shooting and obtain an authoritative account of the affair from the British authorities in command there. Should a permit be granted it will enable the Allied representatives here to obtain the means of denying a false report which has been, and throughout the future will be, of great disadvantage. The People’s Commissar Mr. Kedrov, who is here in direction of all the Soviet affairs under mandate from Lenin and Trotsky, has already stated that this affair is definitive proof that the English and French are no better than the Germans in their attitude toward the Soviet government.
The only means at the disposal of the French Consul to combat such a statement is a secret report as to what was learned by the executive committee representatives at Kem, which is not in itself authoritative or capable of publication. According to this report it [Page 499] was ascertained that the three men had not been killed at the same time or place: that two were killed while resisting Allied troops, either while resisting arrest or while firing from buildings at the soldiers entering the city, while the third was killed by four Serbian soldiers who were convoying him, after arrest, to prison or to an officer.
Other acts complained of by the Soviet authorities are the hoisting of the old Russian commercial flag on requisitioned Russian vessels (called by the Bolsheviks the “Tsar’s flag”), the hoisting of the British merchant ensign on other requisitioned ships, the impressment of Russian boats into service, the refusal to allow the crews of Russian ships to land, and the requisition of considerable quantities of timber for barracks.
In the meantime both the Allied Consuls directly concerned, namely, the British and French, have no official word regarding these affairs, nor has such word been sent to the Allied Ambassadors at Vologda, although communication can be had occasionally and more or less illegally.
I have [etc.]