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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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From telegram of the first deputy commissioner of foreign affairs of the USSR A. Y. Vyshinsky to the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in the UK Immaysky

November 5, 1940

Top secret

....

3. On October 26, Cripps asked me on behalf of the [British] government] to supply Greece with some gasoline. I, in turn, asked if the British [government] government would obstruct the transportation of 5,000 tons of gasoline from the USSR across the Mediterranean to France. Today Cripps told me in a conversation that the British [government] cannot but obstruct our gasoline supplies to France.

I declared that such a different formulation of the question with respect to Greece and France was unacceptable to us, but that this question should be decided by the VNKVT.

In conclusion, Cripps was interested in our views on the Greek‐Italian war, our attitude to the fact of the attack on Greece, and what is the attitude of comrade Stalin to the establishment of more friendly relations between the USSR and Turkey. On the first question, I referred to the principles of our foreign policy; on the second, that I do not consider myself entitled to express comrade Stalinʹs opinion on this issue without authority; to Crippsʹ question about the point of view of the NKID, I replied that our relations with Turkey are determined by the 1925 treaty *, in the spirit of which our attitude to the question posed at the present time should be considered.

Vyshinsky

Avp rf, f. 059, on. 1, p. 326, d. 2239, l. 89‐94.