125.977/31: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:33 p.m.]
1495. Vyshinski,82 who had asked me to call on him yesterday evening, told me he wanted to clear up a misunderstanding which apparently had arisen concerning the opening of a Consulate at Vladivostok. He said that according to a report received from Oumanski83 the Under Secretary84 on November 1 had expressed satisfaction that the Soviet Government had agreed to the opening of an American Consulate in Vladivostok on or after November 15.85 Vyshinski said that as he had not assured me that we might open the Consulate on or after November 15 he felt there must have been a misunderstanding. I told Vyshinski that he had made it quite clear to [Page 462] me at our conference on October 29th86 that the date of November 15 referred to the date on which additional housing facilities in Moscow would be made available to the Embassy and not to the matter of the Consulate in Vladivostok and that I had so reported to the Department and that in consequence the misunderstanding must have arisen as a result of a garble in telegraphic transmission. To this he readily agreed. He then said that the Soviet Government was prepared definitely to agree to the opening of an American Consulate General in Vladivostok after November 20, 1940, and handed me a memorandum which, after drawing my attention to the misunderstandings above referred to, concluded:
“Insofar as the substance of the question concerning the opening of the Consulate General of the United States at Vladivostok is concerned, if on October 29 I did not yet have the instructions from my Government on this question, at the present time I can inform Mr. Steinhardt that the Soviet Government has agreed to the opening of the Consulate General after November 20, 1940 as soon as housing facilities have been prepared and certain technical questions connected with the matter have been decided.”
In view of Vyshinski’s observations concerning a misunderstanding I have checked and verified the wording of my telegram as well as the coding thereof which “the Soviet Government had in principle decided to agree to the establishment of a Consulate in Vladivostok and that by November 15 would receive additional housing facilities.” It would seem therefore that this sentence must have been garbled in transmission as the Department will observe from Vyshinski’s memorandum the Soviet Government agrees to the establishment of a “Consulate General” in Vladivostok although in accordance with the Department’s instruction in its original and subsequent notes on the subject the Embassy referred to “Consulate.” In agreeing to the establishment of a Consulate General the Soviet Government has probably been motivated by the fact that the only two consular establishments permitted in Vladivostok, namely, the Japanese and the German, are both Consulates General.
Having disposed of the subject of the Consulate Vyshinski reaffirmed his previous statement that additional housing would be available after the 15th and also added that immediately after the Soviet holidays87 he would make every effort to dispose of the question of the American citizens still remaining in Soviet-occupied Poland and to accelerate the issuance of exit visas to the Soviet wives of American citizens.
- Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, Assistant People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.↩
- Konstantin Alexandrovich Umansky, Soviet Ambassador in the United States.↩
- Sumner Welles, Under Secretary of State.↩
- See memorandum by the Under Secretary of State, October 31, p. 403.↩
- See telegram No. 1454, October 30, 8 p.m., from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, p. 400.↩
- Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 25/November 7, 1917.↩