Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Europe: Political and Economic Developments, Volume IV, Part 2

No. 817

611.61/10–2651

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador to the Soviet Union (Kirk)¹

top secret

[Washington,] October 26, 1951.

Subject: Visit with the President from 12:05 to 12:45

Participants:	President Harry S. Truman
	Ambassador Alan G. Kirk

The President received me by appointment at 12:05 today, and after the usual informal conversation as to health, et cetera, took up the following topics:

1. The President outlined reports received from General Bedell Smith concerning the withdrawal of Russian jet fighter airplanes from the various fighter fields in East Germany and East Austria, and asked for comment as to what this might indicate. My reply was that not having heard of this withdrawal before then, it was difficult to give an off-hand opinion. It did not seem, however, that this withdrawal indicated imminent offensive action on their part. Whether the planes would be shifted to another front, such as Korea, it was difficult to say. The President wondered if this might indicate some move into Persia, and I suggested that such a movement by the Soviet Union would very likely precipitate World War III, to which the President assented.

2. The President then asked what the situation was inside the Soviet Union vis-à-vis the United States. My answer was that the effect of propaganda machinery of the Communist Party, with its control over all media of mass communication, was disadvantageous from our point of view. We were being pictured as warmongers, imperialists, encirclers of the Soviet Union, and preparing to launch an aggressive war. Although many Russians were probably not swallowing this propaganda in toto, yet the net result was, in my view, some of it did stick in their minds.

3. We then talked about the rearmament of Germany, and I expressed the view that although the rearmament of Japan and the United States did not make a great impact on the mind of the ordinary Soviet citizen, all Russians living west of the Ural mountains who had experienced German invasions in 1914–18, and again in 1941–45, were undoubtedly uneasy at talk of a rearmed Germany. German military had been on their lands twice in the memory of living men, and a rearmed Germany represented something tangible and definite to most Soviet citizens.

4. We then went on to talk about my interview with Vishinsky on 5 October and agreed in general that the resumption of armistice talks in Korea seemed to bear some relation to my presentation of 5 October.² In that connection I gave the President some of the details of my talk with Vishinsky, with particular reference to his reluctance to speak to Mr. Stalin without a written paper from me. (We mentioned the Smith–Molotov conversations of 1948 as the reason for my recent oral statement.) I told the President it made me uneasy to note Vishinsky’s reluctance to speak to Stalin without something in writing, because I wondered whether Mr. Stalin was receiving from his various sources throughout the world a frank and clear-cut statement of what was going on. The President agreed this was a doubtful point and one of some concern to all of us.

5. We then spoke of the British elections and the probable selection of Mr. Churchill as Prime Minister.³ The President expressed himself very firmly against a meeting of the Big 3 at this time and felt that the United Nations was the proper forum for such topics. The President said he did not intend to go to Moscow, and recalled that he had invited Mr. Stalin to Washington.⁴ The President said this attitude on his part had been expressed to Secretary Acheson recently and that when I saw the Secretary in Paris I was to say the President was still of the same mind.⁶

6. Mentioning the opening of the General Assembly on 6 November at Paris as a probable platform on which the Soviets would renew their campaign for a 5-Power Pact, the President said he saw no need for that because of the United Nations Organization, to which the Soviet Government belonged, as the proper forum to discuss such matters.⁷

7. In reply to his inquiry, I told the President that the situation for the ordinary people in the Soviet Union was better than that of two years ago. There were more consumer goods coming from the satellite countries, who received their raw materials from the USSR. In fact, I commented that natural raw rubber was the only strategic raw material not available within the confines of the Soviet Union.

8. I then mentioned the question of Russian wives of Americans in Moscow, with particular reference to Mr. Robert Tucker, and I outlined the current situation—namely that Gromyko on 4 October had said there was no possibility of the Soviet Government changing its mind.⁸

9. I commented to the effect that we seized the diplomatic initiative by recent action such as the San Francisco Conference on the Japanese Treaty, the new Pacific Pact, the Ottawa Conference, the Washington meeting of the three Foreign Ministers,⁹ and our declaration on the Italian Peace Treaty.¹⁰ To my comment that at the General Assembly in Paris the Soviet delegation would try to recapture the diplomatic initiative, the President assented.

10. On taking leave of the President I stated that I thought our foreign policies were good, were sound, and were bearing fruit.

Alan G. Kirk

1. Copies of this memorandum were directed to Secretary Acheson, Under Secretary Webb, Deputy Under Secretary Matthews, Assistant Secretary Perkins, and Barbour of EUR/EE.
2. See telegram 586 from Moscow, Document 812.
3. The reference here is to the British national election of October 25. Following the Conservative Party victory in that election, Churchill succeeded Attlee as Prime Minister.
4. At the concluding session of the American-British-Soviet heads of government conference at Potsdam, July 17–August 1, 1945, President Truman expressed the hope that the next Big Three meeting be held in Washington ( Foreign Relations, The Conference at Berlin (Potsdam Conference) 1945, vol. ii, p. 601). At his first interview with Stalin on April 4, 1946, Ambassador in the Soviet Union Walter Bedell Smith delivered a letter from President Truman containing an invitation to Stalin to visit the United States ( Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. vi, p. 732, footnote 75). At press conferences in January and February 1949 and February 1950, President Truman reiterated his readiness to meet Stalin in Washington (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1949, pp. 98 and 129 and ibid., 1950, p. 162).
6. Ambassador Kirk served as an adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the Sixth Session of the U.N. General Assembly which convened in Paris on November 6.
7. For documentation on the Soviet proposal for a five-power pact for the strengthening of peace, introduced at the Fourth Session of the U.N. General Assembly in 1949, see Foreign Relations, 1949, vol. ii, pp. 72 ff.
8. See telegram 582 from Moscow, Document 811.
9. Regarding the meetings of the American, British, and French Foreign Ministers in Washington, September 10–14, see Document 807.
10. For text, see Document 317.