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Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Yugoslavia (Allen)1
I returned today the official call which Soviet Chargé d’Affaires Snjukov2 made on me February 3rd. During a forty-five minute conversation, he endeavored energetically to find out whether the United States would grant assistance to Yugoslavia.
He began by referring to the “pessimism” in Marshal Tito’s latest speech (at Uzice on February 17)3 and asked why I thought the Marshal felt so obviously doubtful that he would obtain economic aid from the West. I said the impression I got from the Marshal’s speech was that he had genuine doubts that the United States would assist Yugoslavia. I thought it possible Marshal Tito might be making the same mistake many people did in thinking that American foreign policy was based primarily on opposition to Marxism or Communism. I said our primary objection was to aggression and subjugation of one nation by another, regardless of the political or economic philosophy of the dominating country or of the country dominated, but that many people, including possibly Marshal Tito, did not understand this fact very well.
Mr. Snjukov commented that the great majority of American literature he read would indicate that our primary object was to obliterate Communism from the world. I agreed that a good deal of the material which came out of the United States would give that impression, but that I personally believed that most of the American speakers and writers who demanded an American crusade against Communism really had in mind aggressive and expanding Communism, spread through force and subversive means, and that they would oppose as vigorously the spread of any other “ism” by that means.
Returning to the subject of Yugoslavia, Mr. Snjukov asked what I thought of the economic situation in the country. I said I thought a simple test could be applied to both the political and economic conditions in any country. If large numbers of the people inside any country were trying to leave it, conditions in the country could not be very satisfactory. I thought that as soon as conditions in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union or any other country were such that the government could allow anyone to leave without risking a stampede for the exits, I would agree that the conditions in that country had become satisfactory. Until that happened in Yugoslavia or the USSR, [Page 1377] I did not believe that either could claim that their economic situation was very good.
Mr. Snjukov referred to Marshal Tito’s reference to political interference from the West, and asked what Tito had in mind. By way of reply, I remarked that the East and West were engaged in a contest to win the friendship of the Yugoslav people. I expressed the belief that the victory would go to the side which convinced Tito and the Yugoslav people that that side was more likely to allow Yugoslavia to run its own affairs. I said I thought the Yugoslavs were testing out the situation, and that whenever they felt they would have more independence through friendship with the Soviet Union than the United States, they would switch to the USSR. I frankly did not believe that moment would ever arise, since Soviet policy in the satellite areas was not encouraging.
Mr. Snjukov promptly switched the conversation to China and said he thought the United States had lost out in China because the Chinese people had become convinced that the United States sought to dominate them through Chiang Kai-Shek,4 and that the Chinese had turned to the USSR for that reason. I said that while the USSR appeared to have won the first set in our match over China, the winner might not be determined for some time, possibly five or ten years. However, I agreed that the contest in China would turn on the same point as in Yugoslavia, i.e., whether the governments and the people thought the United States or the USSR were the more genuine friends of their independence. I referred to the support we had given Chinese independence for a hundred years and said I felt no nervousness about the final outcome in the Far East.
Mr. Snjukov referred to George Kennan’s5 recent article in the Reader’s Digest6 as evidence that the chief reliance of the United States, in its contest against the Soviet Union, was on our military strength rather than on principle. I agreed that the excerpt from Mr. Kennan’s article, as carried in the Department’s Radio Bulletin No. 45,7 (which was Mr. Snjukov’s source of information) might give that impression, but I believed the article as a whole would give a contrary impression. Mr. Snjukov said that the Kennan article was further evidence to him that the United States was determined to eliminate Communism from the world, no matter how peacefully the Soviet Union might try to live behind its own frontier. I expressed [Page 1378] every confidence that if the Soviet Union ceased its efforts to dominate other countries, our two nations would never come to blows, no matter what economic and political system the USSR might apply within its own borders.
We terminated amicably a conversation which proved nothing and which, chances are, will be the last Mr. Snjukov and I will ever have occasion to engage in, since he is never seen outside his Embassy.
- The source text was transmitted to the Department of State as an enclosure to despatch 221, March 7, from Belgrade, not printed.↩
- Anatoliy Prokopyevich Snyukov, Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Yugoslavia, serving as Chargé.↩
- See telegram 215, February 19, from Belgrade, p. 1370.↩
- President of the Republic of China (Nationalist China).↩
- Counselor of the Department of State.↩
- Kennan’s article, entitled “Is War with Russia Inevitable?”, appeared in the March issue of the Reader’s Digest. It was also published in Department of State Bulletin, February 20, 1950, pp. 267–271.↩
- The Wireless (Radio) Bulletin was the official news service of the Department of State. It was prepared by the Division of International Press and Publications and transmitted daily by radio (wireless) to foreign service posts around the world. Issue No. 45 was dated February 23, 1950.↩