861.24/9–344: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 3—7:15 p.m.]
3282. Personal for Harry Hopkins from Nelson.21 Mikoyan during my meeting with him September 1 raised with me a serious question regarding the list of items expected to be included in paragraph III, group V of the 4th Protocol, for which financial assistance of the Lend-Lease Act will not be extended. Mikoyan said that inasmuch as during the current negotiations on the proposed 3–c agreement the Soviet Government had already accepted the principle of repaying the United States Government from now on for long-term equipment purchased for Russia with lend-lease funds, he could not understand why these particular items should be excluded from receiving lend-lease financial aid. I replied that I was inclined to feel as he did although I was not intimately familiar with the matter and I would take the problem up immediately with my Government. It seems to me that with the exception of a few minor items such as automatic potato chip and julienne machinery, the categories of equipment on the list referred to by Mikoyan are not essentially different from the many others we have already agreed to finance with lend-lease funds under the 4th Protocol and that in particular the plants for manufacturing housing materials should be considered essential to the Russian war effort. Mr. Harriman is fully informed and I wonder if after you have considered this matter you could cable to him for transmission to Mikoyan your views thereon. [Nelson.]
- Donald M. Nelson, Chairman, War Production Board and head of U.S. Economic Mission to the Soviet Union, 1943, and to China, 1944; visited Moscow en route to China.↩