361.1121/18: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 8—9:45 a.m.]
1313. Lozovski asked me to call this morning and stated that the Soviet Government is prepared immediately to release Mrs. Habicht, Devenis, and Cisleeki [Cisiecki]98 from imprisonment and to grant exit visas to them and to Mrs. Magidoff, Putkowski, and Wagshal, and is taking steps today to that end and has already directed that Mrs. Habicht be brought to Moscow. The only qualification he made was to suggest that Devenis, who has been imprisoned at Vilna, probably is no longer under the control of the Soviet authorities.
He said that in return the Soviet Government would expect the American Government to cause the charges against Ovakimian99 and the “three Bookniga clerks”, whom he named as Rasch, Lisken and Weinberg,1 to be dropped and would permit their departure from the United States.
Insofar as concerns my proposal that a Provisional Consulate be opened at Sverdlovsk he said that the matter is still under consideration but that he hoped a decision would be arrived at by tomorrow and that he would communicate the same to me immediately.
As to the other matters referred to in my telegram No. 1309, July 7, 4 p.m.,2 he said no decision has as yet been reached.
- Upon further inquiry for the release of Cisiecki (Vasily Tsesetsky), who had been arrested in Poland in 1939 for alleged illegal possession of firearms and sentenced to 5 years of hard labor, the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs asserted on August 18, 1941, that “it has been unable to obtain any information with respect to the present whereabouts of Cisiecki who, at the outbreak of war, was in the region of Tarnopol. This area was occupied by the German military forces during the early days of the war.” (361.1121 Cisiecki, Wasyl/8) The American Embassy in Berlin could give no help “owing to the absence of postal and telegraphic communications between Germany and German-occupied territory, formerly under the control of the Soviet Government.” (361.1121 Cisiecki, Wasyl/6)↩
- The Department of State informed Ambassador Steinhardt in telegram No. 899, July 15 (p. 900), that the Department of Justice had not yet promised to drop the charges against Ovakimian, but that it was expected to agree to do so in the next few days.↩
- See footnote 91, p. 982.↩
- Ante, p. 895.↩