Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V

361.1115/10–649

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Kirk) to the Secretary of State

secret
urgent

Moscow, October 6, 1949.

No. 566

The Ambassador has the honor to refer to the Department’s telegram No. 492 of July 5, 1949 (7 p. m.)¹ and to previous correspondence on the subject of a proposed exchange of Soviet criminal displaced persons in Germany for American citizens detained for forced labor in the Soviet Union.

Although the Embassy has not yet received information on the dates of release from the Soviet Union of two of the six persons on whom the Embassy was making a special check, it would appear from the replies received on the other four that none of the persons listed in Note No. 36 of May 7, 1949, from the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Embassy’s telegram to Berlin No. 160, June 14, 1949, repeated to Department as No. 1557²), were released subsequent to General Hays’ letter of January 7, 1949, to Major [General] Yurkin, Administrator in Berlin of the Soviet military.³ Thus, the Ministry’s Note No. 36 might be interpreted as an attempt to “sell us a dead horse”; i.e., to obtain the release of Soviet criminals held by the United States in Germany in exchange for American citizens who already had been released from Soviet custody but about whom the Embassy was on record as having evinced an interest.

The Embassy has now sent the enclosed note, No. 575 dated October 4, 1949,⁴ to the Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs in answer to the Ministry’s note of May 7, presenting for renewed and urgent considerations the names of 31 American citizens under detention for forced labor in the Soviet Union. These names were selected after careful review of the cases previously presented to the Ministry, and concerning which the Embassy has made representations to the Ministry during the last two years. The Embassy has endeavored to eliminate from its list the names of all persons about whose American citizenship there is any doubt as well as those considered to have had Nazi connections or sympathies. (Briefs of these individual cases will be sent to the Department in a subsequent despatch.⁵)

While no mention has been made of an exchange proposal in the Embassy’s note No. 575, it is assumed that the Embassy’s list of names will be understood as referring to such an exchange if the Ministry’s note of May 7 was written with the Hays’ letter in mind.

In this general connection, the Department’s attention is also drawn to the Embassy’s despatch No. 509 of September 7, 1949,⁶ on the subject of the detention of American citizens in the Soviet Union.

1. Not printed, but see telegram 1557 from Moscow on June 18, footnote 4, p. 623.
2. Note No. 36 is not printed; but see telegram 1557 from Moscow on June 18, and footnote 1, p. 622.
3. See airgram A–126 from Berlin on February 18, and footnotes 1, 2, and 3, p. 574.
4. The Embassy’s Note No. 575, with its enclosed list of 31 American citizens detained for forced labor in the Soviet Union, is not printed. In the note Ambassador Kirk pointed out that the status of these persons as American citizens was not open to question, and that repeated representations in their behalf had been lodged with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over a period of years. He felt it now necessary “to reiterate that the majority of the thirty-one American citizens to which I now refer are women, that they have been in the Soviet Union for several years, that they have not been afforded an opportunity to communicate with their Embassy, and that, in most cases, their closest living relatives are in the United States.” The Ambassador concluded with a request to the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, Audrey Andreyevich Gromyko, that he would give “personal attention to the individual cases of these persons with a view to their early release and departure from the Soviet Union.”
5. Despatch No. 582 from Moscow on October 10, not printed. This despatch transmitted 29 citizenship briefs on these 31 American citizens being held at forced labor in the Soviet Union, with background information and details, to the Department of State.
6. Not printed.