Office of the Historian

320/11–2351: Telegram

The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State

Paris, November 23, 1951.
[Received November 23—12:47 p.m.]

Delga 315. Re addl USSR GA agenda item: Fol is text new Sov agenda item and explanatory memorandum submitted Pres GA November 22.1

“The aggressive acts of the United States of America and its interference in the domestic affairs of other countries, as instanced by the appropriation of 100 millions dollars to pay for the recruitment of persons and the organization of armed groups in the Soviet Union. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and a number of other democratic countries, and outside the territory of those countries.”

1. On 10 October 1951 Mr. Truman, the President of the United States of America, signed the “Mutual Security Act of 1951”,2 which provides for special appropriations to the amount of 100 million dollars for the financing, as stated in the act, of “any selected persons who are residing in or escapees from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania … either to form such persons into elements of the military forces supporting the North Atlantic Treaty organization or for other purposes …”

This act provides for the financing by the Government of the United States of America of persons and armed groups in the territory of [Page 479] the Soviet Union and a number of other states for the purpose of carrying out subversive and diversionary activities within those states.

The act provides for the financing of traitors to their native lands and of war criminals who have fled from their countries and are hiding in the territory of the United States and a number of other states, for the financing of armed groups for the purpose of fighting against the Soviet Union.

The financing by the United States of America—as provided by the act passed in the United States—of subversive organizations and diversionist groups, both in the territory of the Soviet Union and other peace-loving democratic countries and beyond the frontiers of their territory, for the purpose of fighting against those countries constitutes an act of aggression towards the Soviet Union and the states of the peoples democracies.

Such action by the United States of America constitutes an unprecedented interference by the United States in the internal affairs of the said states.

2. This direct interference by the United States of America in the internal affairs of other states is a violation both of generally-recognized rules of international law and of the principles on which the charter of the United Nations is based.

3. Moreover, the adoption of the “Mutual Security Act of 1951,” is a flagrant violation by the United States of America of the Soviet-American agreement of 16 November 1933 concluded by Mr. M. M. Litvinov, Peoples Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and Mr. F. D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, at the time of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. By that agreement the parties entered into a mutual obligation to refrain from subsidizing and supporting military and other organizations having as an aim the bringing about by force of a change in the political or social order of the contracting parties.3

4. By reason of the foregoing, the delegation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proposes for inclusion in the agenda of the sixth regular session of the General Assembly of the United Nations the important and urgent matter of the “aggressive acts of the United States of America and its interference in the domestic affairs of other countries, as instanced by the appropriation of 100 million dollars to pay for the recruitment of persons and the organization of armed groups in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and a number of other democratic countries, and outside the territory of those countries.”

Austin

  1. The text of the new Soviet item is included in the first paragraph herein. The explanatory memorandum comprises the four numbered paragraphs that follow. For official texts of these and other related documents which were formulated subsequently, see United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixth Session, Annexes, fascicule for agenda item 69 (hereafter cited as GA (VI), Annexes).

    For text of the note on the same matter submitted by the Soviet Union to the United States on November 21 through the diplomatic channel, see Department of State Bulletin, December 3, 1951, pp. 910 and 911. The communications of the Embassy in the Soviet Union on this event were telegrams 875 and 876, November 21 (740.5 MAP/11–2151).

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  2. “An Act to maintain the security and promote the foreign policy and provide for the general welfare of the United States by furnishing assistance to friendly nations in the interest of international peace and security”; 65 Stat. 373. For the relevant sections at issue in the Soviet protest, see Doc. US/A/C.1/2518, December 21, 1951, “Excerpt from Mutual Security Act of 1951”, infra. ↩
  3. For the Roosevelt-Litvinov exchanges of November 16, 1933, see Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 27 ff.↩