800.516/87b: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)
866. The Secretary of the Treasury has asked me to send to you the following message:
“Please call upon the People’s Commissar of Finance10 and inforfm him of the following personal message from me. I should also [Page 110] appreciate it if you would supplement the message with an oral explanation of the urgent necessity for an immediate reply.
‘[Here follow first five paragraphs of the personal message, which are similar to the five paragraphs in the personal message to the British Chancellor of the Exchequer transmitted in telegram 2651, April 5, 10 p.m., to London, printed on page 107.]
- 6.
- A similar message has been sent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is for this reason that I am asking the People’s Commissar of Finance to expedite a decision on the publication of the Joint Statement.
- 7.
- Mr. White11 informs me that the discussions between the American technical committee and the technical experts of the U.S.S.R., under the excellent leadership of Mr. Chechulin,12 have made very considerable progress and that the Soviet experts have been most cooperative and have shown high technical competence and a thorough understanding of the proposals.’ ”
Please bring the substance of this message to the attention of the Foreign Office.
The text of the proposed joint statement follows in a separate telegram.13
- Arseny Grigoryevich Zverev.↩
- Harry Dexter White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, and Director of Monetary Research.↩
- N. F. Chechulin, Assistant Chairman of the State Bank in the Soviet Union.↩
- Telegram 865, April 10, midnight, to Moscow, not printed. For text of the joint statement released to the press on April 21, 1944, see Department of State publication No. 2866: Proceedings and Documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1–22, 1944 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1948), vol. ii, p. 1629.↩