J. V. Stalin
Source : Correspondence between the Chairman
of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidents of the USA
and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War
of 1941 - 1945
Publisher : Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR
Transcription/HTML Markup : Salil Sen for MIA,
2010
Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive
(2010). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work;
as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists
Internet Archive" as your source.
The first edition of the Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. and the Presidents of the U.S.A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 published in 1957 has become a bibliographical rarity despite its large printing.
In view of this it was decided to put out a second edition of the correspondence of the heads of the three Great Powers of the anti-Hitler coalition. This book reproduces the second Russian edition with a preface written by A. A. Gromyko.
The present edition, like the first, contains the full texts of all the documents available in the Soviet Union of J. V. Stalin's correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Winston S. Churchill and Clement R. Attlee during the period in question. Certain messages quoted or otherwise mentioned in publications abroad are missing from this book as their texts have not been found in the Soviet archives. In searching for the missing texts it was found that some of them-for instance, a Roosevelt message transmitted to Stalin by U.S. Ambassador Standley on April 23, 1942 1 and a Truman message to Stalin of June 1945 2 had been conveyed orally by the respective representatives during meetings with Stalin. Concerning a Roosevelt message to Stalin in July 1941 3 and another sent, according to Cordell Hull, between February and April 1942, 4 there is no record in the Soviet archives that would indicate that they were transmitted in any form whatever to Stalin or were ever received in the Soviet Union. This is also true for Churchill's message to Stalin of June 23, 1945, 5 which, according to Churchill, was by way of reply to a Stalin message of June 21, 1945 (see Volume One of this book, Doc. No. 493); in the Soviet archives there is a reply from Churchill to the above-mentioned Stalin message, but its contents are different (see Volume One, Doc. No. 497). It appears that in his war memoirs Churchill presented not the final text but one of the drafts of his reply to Stalin. This is borne out by the fact that Churchill dated his message June 23, 1945, whereas the message received by Stalin in reply to his message of June 21, 1945, is dated June 24, 1945.
The Roosevelt message to Stalin concerning deliveries, of October 13, 1941, mentioned by Sherwood, 6 was evidently sent to Churchill in copy for perusal and afterwards was handed in this shape to the Soviet Ambassador in London by the British Minister Beaverbrook, who was in charge of deliveries, in October 1941; but there is nothing in the archives to confirm transmission of the message directly by U.S. representatives to the Soviet side.
Volume One includes the correspondence with Winston S. Churchill and Clement R. Attlee, and Volume Two, the correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman - the correspondence with Roosevelt began at a later date than that with Churchill.
The correspondence between the heads of the Governments published here was conducted chiefly by exchanging code messages through the Soviet Embassies in Washington and London and through the Embassies of the U.S.A. and Great Britain in Moscow. The messages were decoded in the respective Embassies and their texts delivered to the addressee generally in the original language. Some of the messages were delivered by diplomatic post or by authorised representatives of the Powers concerned.
The messages of the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain appear in their original wording, with the exception of some documents available in the Soviet Union in Russian translation only. In this volume they are Nos. 2, 11, 24, 25, 46, 52, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 68 and 332, Nos. 2, 11, 58, 61, 62, and 68 were printed in various British and American publications, and their English texts are given in this volume according to those publications. Others, i.e., Nos. 24, 25, 46, 52, 59, 67 and 332, for which the original English texts are not available, have been translated back from the Russian.
The ordinal numbers under which the messages appear in this collection have been supplied by the Editors.
An asterisk in the title of a message denotes that the document had no title and that the title used has been furnished by the Editors.
The dates on which the messages were signed are reproduced when available in the lower left-hand corner under the text. Where the date is missing in the original the date given in this book is that of despatch or receipt.
Brief reference notes and photostats are appended.
Compilation was handled by the Department of Diplomatic History of the USSR Foreign Ministry.
1. This message is mentioned in Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation 1939-1945, Washington, 1949.
2. Mentioned in James F. Byrnes' Speaking Frankly, London, 1947. Byrnes does not give the exact date of the message.
3. Quoted in The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood, Vol. I, London, 1948-1949. Sherwood does not give the exact date of the message.
4. Mentioned in The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Vol. II, New York, 1948. Hull does not give the exact date of the message.
5. Quoted in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, London, 1954.
6. Robert E. Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, Vol. I, London, 1948-1949.