196.6/1595: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State
[Received 2:40 p.m.]
1513. Your 692, August 14, 8 p.m. The Embassy has received an aide-mémoire from the Foreign Office which states that the Soviet [Page 706] Government is prepared to establish a system of payments of specified sums in Soviet currency to seamen on American vessels delivering cargo at Soviet ports. For each such trip it is proposed to pay 1,000 rubles to each senior officer, 600 rubles to each intermediate and junior officer, and 300 rubles to each seaman. The note adds that these sums are to assure the possibility for members of the crew to pay personal expenses while ashore. It is further proposed to pay similar bonuses to sailors rescued from sunken vessels carrying cargoes destined for the Soviet Union.
The system of payment would be a distribution of funds to be made by the representative of the WSA in the particular port according to lists certified by the captain of the vessel or in the case of payments to seamen rescued from sunken vessels from lists certified by the representative of the WSA. The certified lists would be turned over to the representative of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade at the respective ports who would turn over to the WSA representative the sums due for payment. Finally the aide-mémoire proposes if the overall suggestion is satisfactory to the Government of the United States to put the system into force as of September 1.
The British Embassy has also received an aide-mémoire which makes practically an identical suggestion. The proposal to the British includes bonuses for crane ship crews which is unnecessary in the case of the United States. This aide-mémoire also states that regardless of the outcome of the present negotiations any payment of rubles to personnel of British vessels at any rate of exchange other than the official rate of the Government bank of the USSR will be considered as an infringement of Soviet financial law with all the consequences arising therefrom.
Furthermore the note to the British specifies only a “single” payment for any given voyage. While the note to this Embassy does not make an identical statement the same meaning is implied in “payments of definite sums …60 for each trip.” This wording does not take into account cases arising from long layovers in port such as have occurred during the past summer and might conceivably occur again next summer. Since in such a contingency the specified sums would be wholly inadequate it is suggested that the Soviet proposal be accepted with a reservation of continued negotiation on cases arising from long layovers.61 Thus it would be possible to establish at once [Page 707] the payments for vessels now operating without prejudice to particular cases which may arise.
The British Embassy is making a similar recommendation to London.
- Omission indicated in the original telegram.↩
- Acceptance of the offer from the Soviet Government was suggested in a letter of October 12 from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to Rear Adm. Emory S. Land, War Shipping Administrator (196.6/1595). The Embassy in Moscow was informed by telegram No. 1292, November 27, that the War Shipping Administration had accepted this proposal (196.6/1619).↩