Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume IV

800.20261/11–2947: Airgram

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Durbrow) to the Secretary of State

secret

Moscow, November 29, 1947.

A–1278. Constant and high-powered attention has been devoted in Soviet internal propaganda since June toward imposing upon the consciousness of the population the implications and objectives of the State Secrets decrees. The seriously adverse effect of this campaign on the conditions under which the Embassy must conduct its information gathering activities is becoming increasingly manifest.

The spearhead of the campaign has been Col. General Ulrich,¹ the country’s outstanding trial judge who has presided over most of the notorious treason and espionage trials held since the Revolution. His violent charges that foreign countries are attempting in every way to introduce agents for the gathering of information which will help undermine the Soviet regime were the burden of his public lecture in August and article in Party Life in September (Embassy despatches 1640 and 1772²). New Times asserted that the foreign embassies in Moscow are one source of spies (A–955, September 18³). A lengthy legalistic discussion of the decrees by Professor V. D. Menshagin provided a basis for consideration of the matter in legal circles (Embassy despatch 1707⁴). Mass publicity has been carried on chiefly through the military services papers, Red Star and Red Fleet, which tends to tie the question in the minds of the people more closely to the defence of the country (A–1217, November 17³).

The following are some examples of the constricting effect of this campaign on the Embassy’s sources of information:

1. In mid-August an Embassy officer travelling from Vladivostok to Moscow was unable to engage his car companions in a single conversation throughout the 10½-day journey—quite in contrast to his previous experience and contrary to the normally congenial and garrulous Russian nature.

2. The recent detention of the British Military Attaché for alleged espionage during the course of his customary hiking excursion.⁵ Whether it resulted from the zeal of security conscious factory workers or was an official “frame-up”, it was definitely used to put the finger on foreign diplomatic personnel in Moscow.

3. A Moscow official curtly refused to discuss with a member of the Embassy staff a routine matter, similar to many discussed with him in the past, and abruptly stated that there are new regulations now and the matter should be referred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

4. In two instances recently, persons with American connections have been removed from good jobs and in one case permission to live in Moscow was canceled.

5. The American newspaper correspondents here who are always cooperative in imparting useful items of news to the Embassy report a noticeable drying up of their Russian sources.

6. The gathering of information from visiting American engineers and businessmen, is also in jeopardy. Ulrich classes all foreign engineers and businessmen as potential spies and Menshagin makes it clear that any foreigner who should divulge state secrets, which now include information on “industry as a whole and its various branches, agriculture, trade and transport” is definitely open to prosecution under a charge of espionage.

Durbrow

1. Col. Gen. Vasily Vasilyevich Ulrikh (Ulrich) was Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, and President of the Military Collegium of that court.
2. Neither printed. The Embassy commented upon Ulrikh’s lecture of August 28 entitled “On the Vigilance of Soviet People” in despatch 1640 from Moscow on September 20: “Since Ulrich mentioned that all infringements of the State Secrets decree will be tried in a military court and since the decree itself establishes such drastic penalties for what would be considered in the United States merely security violations (the decree specifically states that it applies only to offenses ‘which cannot be described as treason or espionage’) and defines as a ‘state secret’ almost all military, economic, agricultural and technical information, it is clear that the Soviet government is imposing on its people a far more severe code in peacetime than most civilized countries use in wartime. Indeed, the fact that this new code was applied in the USSR only after the end of hostilities would seem to indicate that the Soviet government considers the present threat of espionage from some quarters greater than that from its recent enemies.” (861.04417/9–2047)
3. Not printed.
4. Menshagin’s article entitled “The Strengthening of the Protection of State Secrets” was published in Sovyetskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo [The Soviet State and Law], no. 8 (August 1947), and was commented upon in the Embassy’s despatch 1707 from Moscow on October 8: “This article is important as being the first scholarly effort to interpret the significance and application of the state secrets act, and as an attempt to justify its promulgation with emphasis on the legal justification. Furthermore the article reveals that the government is still constrained to remind the people that the USSR exists in a perpetual state of war, even though formal warfare has ceased.… The severity of these decrees and this specious attempt to justify such an extreme measure indicate that the government still finds it necessary to threaten, drive and even coax the Russians into a fighting Bolshevik mood. The entire campaign would appear to argue a war-weariness of the people and apathy on their part towards the Party goals.” (861.04417/10–847)
3. Not printed.
5. Brigadier (later Major General) Richard Hilton was twice molested by police authorities of the Soviet Union, once in October on a charge of spying with field glasses, and again about November 22. This time the British Ambassador was instructed to make a strong and frank protest over the treatment accorded.