740.0011 Pacific War/864: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 10—3:31 a.m.]
2035. There has as yet been no official indication of the reaction of the Soviet Government to the Japanese attack upon the United States and the resultant hostilities. The news was first received here in the early morning hours Monday,53 on which day no local papers are published. Today’s Kuibyshev paper devotes approximately two-thirds of its foreign affairs page to the hostilities in the Pacific area, most of the text, however, consisting of Tass news despatches from the various capitals concerned. While no Soviet comment accompanies these items, it is noticeable (a point of significance in analyzing the Soviet press) that the greater part of these despatches are from American and British sources.
In so far as the reaction of the Soviet public is concerned, such information as has come to me by courtesy of the American journalists and others who have some slight contact with Soviet citizens indicates that, as was to be expected, the feeling is hostile to Japanese, entirely favorable to ourselves—although the possibility that our involvement in actual hostilities might result in the curtailment of the flow of American war supplies to the Soviet Union was expressed in more than one instance. Nothing has been reported to me indicating that either official or private Soviet commentators contemplate action at this time by the Soviet Government which on the contrary, it is assumed, will continue at least for the present to be guided by the Soviet-Japanese pact of neutrality.
I called on Vyshinski54 this evening for the purpose of discussing pending Embassy questions with him and although our conversation [Page 1027] inevitably dealt with the Japanese-American hostilities, he made no comment other than to indicate his very cordial good will. I did not, of course, attempt to elicit from him any statement on this subject. I did, however, ask him if he had had any communication from the Japanese Ambassador and he replied that Tatekawa had just called to convey to him a formal oral declaration that Japan is at war with the United States, Great Britain and several members of the British Commonwealth.