Correspondence II.

Előszó

FOREWORD
This publication contains the correspondence exchanged by J. V. Stalin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R., with Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the U.S.A., Harry S. Truman, President of the U.S.A., Winston S. Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Clemenl R. Attlee, Prime Minister of Great Britain, during the Great Patriotic War and in the period between victory and the end of 1945.
Tendentiously selected parts of this correspondence were published outside the Soviet Union at different times resulting in a distorted picture of the Soviet attitude during the war years.
This publication is to help restore historical truth. It 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,' and a Truman message to Stalin of June 1945^ —had been conveyed orally by the respective representatives during meetings with Stalin. Concerning a Roosevelt message to Stalin in July I94P and another sent, according to Cordell Hull, between February and April 1942,'' 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, pp. 368-369 Doc. No. 493): in the Soviet archives there is a reply from Churchill to the
' This message is mentioned in Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation 1939-1945, Washington, 1949, pp. 199-200.
2 Mentioned in Byrnes' Speaking Frankly, London, 1947, p. 64. Byrnes does not give the exact date of the message.
® Quoted in The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood, Vol. I, London, pp. 321-322. Sherwood does not give the exact date of the message.
Mentioned in The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Vol. II, New York, 1948, p. 1170. Hull does not give the exact date of the message.
5 Quoted in Winston SV the Second WorM
London, 1954, pp. 488-489. i Vissza