860F.00/11–2949

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Harold C. Vedeler, Principal Assistant to the Officer in Charge of Polish, Baltic, and Czechoslovak Affairs, Office of Eastern European Affairs

secret

Dr. Heidrich1 called by request to discuss the question whether the Council of Free Czechoslovakia should admit as members any refugees from Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. He said that certain members of the [Page 297] Council had raised this question proposing the membership of specific individuals and that he wished on behalf of the Council to know what the attitude of the State Department would be on the inclusion of such persons.

I said that in our view the composition of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia was a matter for the decision of the Czechs and Slovaks themselves so long as the Council took no action which might embarrass this Department. In the further consideration of the matter he and his colleagues might wish to take into account two points. The first was the fact that the US has ratified two treaties, the Peace Treaties with Rumania and Hungary, which provide for frontiers between the Soviet Union and those two countries on the basis of the territorial arrangements effected through the Soviet-Czechoslovak Agreement of June 29, 1945 by which Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was transferred to the Soviet Union. The Peace Treaty with Rumania refers explicitly to this agreement of June 1945 defining the Soviet-Rumania frontier.

The second point was the effect which inclusion of representatives from Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia might have on future relations between a free Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in the event of Czechoslovakia’s liberation from the present regime without a general territorial resettlement in Eastern Europe. It was conceivable that some time in the future Soviet control of Czechoslovakia might be thrown off without such a general upheaval. The influence which inclusion of Ruthenian representatives and active espousal of claims to Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia at this time might exert on the winning of Czechoslovak freedom and the establishment of stable relations with the Soviet Union under these conditions might well be carefully appraised.

Dr. Heidrich intimated that he personally was not inclined to admission of Ruthenian representatives and that the Council would give a good deal of further thought to the question, probably deferring a decision for the present.

[
Harold C. Vedeler
]
  1. Dr. Arnost Heidrich, Secretary General of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia; Secretary General of the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry until his flight into exile at the end of 1948.