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tions of a Diplomat: Notes, 1938-1947], ambassador to the Yugoslav and Greek gov- Soviet-American relations of the first meet-
Moscow: Politizdat, 1989. ernments-in-exile. ing, later that month, between Truman and
In early 1945, Novikov arrived in Wash- Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M.
Despite all the revelations about Soviet ington and assumed the duties of deputy Molotov. Truman s uncompromising stance
history which have emerged from the former chief of mission under then-ambassador on Poland, Novikov recalls, caused the So-
Soviet Union in the past few years, many Andrei Gromyko. Because Gromyko was viet government to reach the appropriate
unexplained blank spots remain. This constantly absent attending to other diplo- conclusions as to the possibility of future
gap in understanding is especially evident in matic business, such as the formation of the cooperation with the United States.
the area of Soviet foreign policy, which was United Nations, Novikov quickly became Novikov goes on to observe that by the
among the last issues to be opened to public charge d affaires and de facto head of the summer of 1945, Truman had removed most
discussion under Mikhail Gorbachev s Soviet embassy in Washington from January cabinet members who supported coopera-
policy of glasnost. One question of great 1945 until his appointment as Gromyko s tion with the USSR, and appointed James F.
interest which remains relatively undocu- successor in April 1946. He remained in that Byrnes as Secretary of State. Describing
mented concerns Soviet foreign policy dur- capacity until his return to Moscow in Octo- Byrnes as an active proponent of a biparti-
ing the early years of the Cold War. We still ber 1947. He was thus quite well situated to san foreign policy, Novikov argues that
have a very incomplete picture of both how observe the transformation of Soviet-Ameri- this policy was only a screen for the inter-
that policy was formulated and on what can relations in those years. ests of the monopolies within the country
information it was based. Nikolai V. Overall, Novikov s memoir delivers a and the expansion of American imperialism
Novikov s memoir, Reflections of a Diplo- typical pre-glasnost interpretation of Soviet- abroad. After the appointment of Byrnes,
mat, makes some small contributions to American ties in the 1945-47 period. He Novikov writes, there was no need of fur-
filling in some of those blank spots, al- never really deviates from the premise that it ther speculation as to which direction the
Continued on page 21
though it leaves many questions unanswered. was U.S. imperialism which caused the
Novikov, who served as charge falling out between Moscow and Washing-
d affaires and then ambassador at the Soviet ton after 1945. As in his letter of 1946, he
NEW EVIDENCE ON B
embassy in Washington from 1945 to 1947, never mentions the possibility that Soviet
O prestupniix antipartiniix antigosudarstveniix
has become familiar to many Western schol- actions during these years could have rea-
diestviax Beria. [ On the Crimes and Anti-Party,
ars as the author of the recently declassified sonably aroused American suspicions. Al-
Anti-Government Activities of Beria. ] Plenum of
and released Novikov Letter, a report on though this portrait is one-sided, it should not
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
American foreign policy written in Septem- be dismissed as mere posturing. By 1989,
Soviet Union, 2-7 July 1953, from Isvestia CC -
ber 1946.1 His memoir, published in 1989, Novikov could have published an account
CPSU:1991, 1:140-214 & 2:141-208.
offers some additional insights into the more critical of Soviet policy. That he did
The minutes of the July 1953 Central Committee
sources of the letter itself, the Soviet percep- not, and that his analysis utilizes the same
sessions discussing the alleged crimes of Interior Min-
tion of the United States in the period 1945- terms and categories as Soviet public state-
ister and secret police chief Lavrenti Beria are divided
47, and the functioning of the Soviet diplo- ments of the late 1940s, suggests that the into two installments and found in the Political Ar-
chives section of the Isvestia CC - CPSU journal. Most
matic service during those years. views he expresses were sincerely held. His
of the key political figures of that time (Malenkov,
Novikov s biography typifies the ca- interpretation, then, should not be simply
Bulganin, Khrushchev, Kaganovich) speak in the first
reer pattern of many Soviet diplomats of his rejected, but rather looked upon as broadly
section with the exception of Mikoyan whose address
generation. In the early 1930s, in Leningrad, indicative of Soviet perceptions of the United
appears in the second installment.
he took a degree in the economics of the States at the time. One should not forget that
The sessions occurred four months after the death
Near East. After a few years in Soviet even if Novikov constituted one channel of
of Stalin, and two weeks after the June 16-17 anti-
Central Asia, he returned to Moscow to information about the United States avail-
communist uprising in East Berlin. The Soviet leader-
pursue graduate studies and a career in able to the Soviet leadership at this time, he
ship, the transcript shows, is terrified by the ongoing
academia. His ambitions were cut short, was an important one. From this perspective exodus of East Germans to West Germany. At the time
of the plenum Beria, the former head of the NKVD
however, by the closing of his institute in his views are worth examining, even if we do
(People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and MVD
1938. He was then drafted, over his objec- not know how much influence they had in the
(Ministry of Internal Affairs), has already been secretly
tions, into service at the purge-depleted Soviet policy-making process.
arrested and expelled from the Party. He was accused
Commissariat of Foreign Affairs because of In accordance with his overall interpre-
of attempting to seize total power, being an imperialist
his knowledge of foreign languages and tation, Novikov views Roosevelt s death as a
spy, plotting to allow the German Democratic Republic
COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 17
perhaps to ease their minds about an enclave engage in a one-on-one conversation with a
MOLOTOV
Stalin had mischievously given Azerbaijan major figure in a gigantic criminal organiza-
years earlier: Nagorno-Karabakh. The Geor- tion. The answers come readily, couched
REMEMBERS
gians, who knew Koba even better, claimed not in anything resembling normal human
a piece of Turkish territory adjacent to Batumi emotions but rather in the stupefyingly cyni-
By Woodford McClellan on the grounds that some of their brothers cal amorality that characterized the Com-
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