711.61/787: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 25—6:35 p.m.]
170. I have had a further talk this evening with Lozovski in the course of which I again urged him to take action in the matter of the Soviet wives,15 the discrimination against the American newspaper correspondents and the Roszkowski case. I also brought to his attention the recent demand of the Soviet authorities that American citizens pay for their railroad transportation from Moscow to Vladivostok in American currency (see my 144, January 23, 8 p.m.16). I further called to his attention the large number of notes from the Embassy to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs during 1940 which remain unanswered. He stated that he would give these matters his immediate attention.
Lozovski referred to the lifting of the moral embargo17 as “merely the correction of a condition which never should have existed,” and expressed the hope that the questions of the Baltic ships, gold and Legations would be similarly “corrected” at an early date.18 In reply I expressed the hope that full compensation would soon be offered by the Soviet Government for American properties confiscated in the Soviet occupied areas.
- For previous correspondence on this subject, see memorandum by the Ambassador in the Soviet Union of March 14, 1938, and footnote 34, Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 533–536; and his despatch No. 19, August 16, 1939, ibid., p. 844. See also the undated memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of European Affairs, and telegrams No. 1329, October 10, 1940, No. 1733, December 15, 1940, and No. 1776, December 23, 1940, from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, Foreign Relations, 1940, vol. iii, pp. 331, 393, 418, and 436, respectively.↩
- Ante, p. 868.↩
- See note of January 21 to the Ambassador of the Soviet Union, p. 696.↩
- For correspondence on difficulties affecting relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, see pp. 667 ff.↩