123 Bullitt, William C/31
Reply of the President of the Soviet All-Union Central Executive Committee (Kalinin) to the American Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Bullitt), at Moscow, December 13, 193346
Mr. Ambassador: I have the honor to receive from you the letters which accredit you as Ambassador of the United States of America to the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I am sincerely moved by the cordial and friendly greetings which you have conveyed to me from the President. And on my part I beg you to convey my sincerest and most friendly greetings and wishes for the happiness and prosperity of your great country.
The outstanding role which you personally, Mr. Ambassador, have played in the matter of mutual rapprochement of our two countries is well known to the wide public in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the very fact, therefore, that it was precisely you who were chosen by the President of the United States as the first Ambassador in the USSR, in itself is considered by us as an act of friendship.
I was always deeply convinced that as soon as the artificial barriers in the way of establishing cooperation between the peoples of the USSR and the American people were removed, such cooperation would assume the widest and most varied forms, and that with good [Page 51] will and mutual respect on both sides, the difference in socio-political systems existing in the two countries need not at all be an obstacle thereto.
I fully share your conviction that between the peoples of the USSR and the American people there can and should exist not only normal but genuinely friendly relations. I wish to assure you that on its part the Soviet Government is filled with the firm determination to help develop and strengthen precisely such relations. The best foundation for such sincerely friendly relations and for their all-sided development is the unswerving will for the maintaining and consolidation of peace which inspires both the peoples of the Soviet Union and the American people.
I thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for the cordial wishes expressed by you to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to me personally. I assure you that in the realization of those high tasks in which you rightly see the important historic significance of your mission, you will always meet with the fullest and most active cooperation on my part and on the part of the Government of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in his despatch No. 1, December 14, 1933; received January 9, 1934.↩