The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's, 1932-1943 by Ivan Maisky

Author:Ivan Maisky [Maisky, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300180671
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-09-23T21:00:00+00:00

5 June

At last, Cripps’s fate has been decided! But what a story it’s been!

It all began on 20 May, when Halifax summoned me and said that the Cabinet had decided to send Stafford Cripps to Moscow as special envoy. For about a week leading up to this, I heard ‘rumours’ from all sides that the new Government wanted to turn a new leaf in its relations with the Soviet Union. It was being said that the prime minister would invite me for a heart to heart talk, that the question of the British ambassador in Moscow would be settled, and that the absurd ‘correspondence’ concerning trade negotiations would be annulled. Personally, I thought that the question of the British ambassador in Moscow should come first. And when Halifax began speaking to me about improving Anglo-Soviet relations, I expected to hear that either Seeds would be returning to Moscow or that the British Government was going to request an agrément for a different ambassador. Halifax’s news concerning a special envoy greatly disappointed me and I inquired rather coolly about the purpose of this envoy’s mission. Halifax sighed, pondered for a moment, and said: ‘To explore the possibilities.’

‘What kind of possibilities?’ I asked.

Halifax replied that he meant the ‘possibilities’ of a general improvement in Anglo-Soviet relations, in particular the ‘possibility’ of a trade agreement with the USSR.

I expressed my surprise that even now the British Government was planning merely to ‘explore possibilities’, instead of getting down to practical matters, but promised to convey Halifax’s message to Moscow.

As was to be expected, the British scheme did not appeal to Moscow. Indeed, what need have we of some astral special envoy, whose obscure mission is to explore the possibilities? Moscow, however, took some time over the reply and finally sent it to London on 26 May. The answer was that the Soviet Government was prepared to receive Cripps, or any other person authorized by the British Government, only not in the capacity of a special envoy, but as an ordinary ambassador accredited on the same basis as I was accredited in London.

... I received the aforesaid reply from Moscow on the morning of 26 May and delivered it to Halifax that very evening (even though it was Sunday). The foreign secretary was confused and unpleasantly surprised. He told me that the issue of a British ambassador in Moscow had only just received the attention of the Government. Four days earlier, it had been decided to recall Seeds and replace him with someone else. Halifax was just about to inform me of the decision and request agrément for the new ambassador. Unfortunately, not all the procedural details had been arranged, so Halifax would only be able to inform me of the name of the new ambassador in a few days’ time. But what should we do with Cripps in the meantime? After all, he had already left and was probably halfway there, perhaps even in Athens.

Halifax sighed again, pondered, and proposed a solution: let Cripps

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