Moscow Embassy Files, Lot F–96—800 Chinese Communists
Memorandum by the Second Secretary of Embassy in the Soviet Union (Davies) to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)
Mr. Ambassador: Attached is a copy of a telegram dated July 10, 1 p.m. from Ambassador Hurley1 which arrived in a badly garbled form and which has been serviced three times, with attendant delays.
We offer the following comment on this message:
The contention of this message appears to be that if the Soviet Government can be persuaded to announce publicly or demonstrate through a treaty its support of Chungking (and by inference, its repudiation of Yenan), the Chinese Communists will realize that they are without foreign backing and will come to terms with Chungking.
We feel that the Soviet Government could quite easily repudiate Yenan publicly without basically altering Yenan’s intransigent attitude. We base this view on:
- 1)
- The dual nature of the Soviet system. If Yenan is controlled from Moscow, it is not by the State apparatus—the Government—but by the Party. The State can, when the Kremlin wishes, publicly follow an unexpectedly conciliatory and sedative policy in matters affecting the interests of other powers. At the same time, the Party can do just the opposite, whispering discreetly in the appropriate ears that it’s all for show and need not be allowed to affect realities.
- 2)
- Should the Soviet Government publicly repudiate Yenan and the Party pronounce an anathema against the Chinese Communist Party (which is hardly thinkable), it does not necessarily follow that Yenan would capitulate to Chungking’s terms. We question even the assumption that if all foreign support were withdrawn from Yenan, it would seek to come to an agreement with Chungking. Readily granting that the Chinese Communists are not as firmly and extensively entrenched as they claim, they are still many times more [Page 440] powerful than during the period 1927–1937 when, with no foreign support save huzzas and poor coaching from the Comintern bleachers, they resisted Chiang with embarrassing persistence. We feel that Soviet influence can sometimes be overestimated. The indigenous strength, vitality and obstinacy of Yenan is a factor not to be ignored and one which, in the last analysis, means that if China is to be unified through negotiations, Chungking is going to have to make the bigger concessions.