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  Selected Secret Documents from Soviet Foreign Policy Documents Archives - 1919 to 1941

Concentrated on 1st and  2nd WW Correspondence and Meetings related to Turkey, Balkans and Iran, with some additions from Afghanistan and India.

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Telegram of the peopleʹs commissioner for foreign affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov to the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in the UK I.M. Maisky

November 17, 1940

Top secret

For your orientation, I give brief information about the berlin conversations *:

1.                   My trip to berlin was in the nature of a return visit to Ribbentrop’s two trips to Moscow last year and took place at the invitation of the German government.

2.                   Contrary to some incorrect reports in the foreign press, the berlin conversations concerned mainly questions of Soviet‐German relations, the fulfillment of the agreements concluded last year and the clarification of possibilities for the further development of SovietGerman relations. Questions about the delimitation of spheres of interest between the USSR, Germany and other countries, as well as questions about the USSRʹs accession to the three‐power pact in berlin were not resolved in these conversations.

3.                   No agreement was signed in berlin and it was not supposed to be done. The case in berlin was limited, as follows from the well‐known communique of November 10, ** to an exchange of views.

4.                   In the future, it is possible to consider in the usual diplomatic manner a number of issues on which there was an exchange of views in berlin.

5.                   As it turned out from the conversations, the Germans want to get their hands on Turkey under the guise of guarantees of its security in the manner of Rumshia, and they want to smear our lips with the promise of revising the convention in Montreux in our favor, and they offer us to help them in this matter. We did not agree to this, because we believe that, firstly, Turkey should remain independent, and, secondly, the regime in the straits can be improved as a result of our negotiations with Turkey, but not behind Turkeyʹs back.

6.                   The Germans and Japanese, apparently, would very much like to push us towards the Persian Gulf and India. We rejected the discussion of this issue as we consider such advice from Germany to be inappropriate.

Molotov avp rf, f. 059, on. 1, p. 326, d. 2239, l. 112‐114. Publ .: international life. ‐ 1991. ‐ no. 8. ‐ p. 119.