“Novikov Note” Received From the Soviet Embassy in the USA

The so-called “Novikov Note”, which historians consider the Soviet analogue of the “long telegram” by George Kennan, was received on 22 September 1946 in Moscow. The analytical note by the Soviet Ambassador to the United State Nikolai Novikov on the “Foreign Policy of the United States in the Post-War Period”, prepared by him in September 1946, was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via diplomatic mail on 22 September and an open, 4,004-word telegram (slightly shorter than Kennan’s 5,540-word telegram) on 27 September. 

The Kennan telegram, sent to Washington on 22 February 1946 by a counselor from the American Embassy in Moscow, explained the impossibility of cooperation with the USSR and the necessity of “containment”. The Novikov telegram was, in fact, a response.

The many theses and figures of speech in the “telegram” reveal Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s “co-authorship”. Not only the circumstances and nature of the dispatch, but also many provisions of the note coincide with the theses of the “long telegram”, which eventually became the basis of post-war American foreign policy regarding the Soviet Union. As Novikov himself later recalled, the note was written at Molotov’s behest and served as a justification for the tightening of Soviet policy concerning the US. In particular, the note stated: “All of the countries of Europe and Asia are experiencing a colossal need for consumer goods, industrial and transportation equipment, etc. Such a situation provides American monopolistic capital with the prospects for the enormous shipments of goods and the importation of capital into these countries - a circumstance that would permit it to infiltrate their national economies. Such a development would mean a serious strengthening of the economic position of the United States in the whole world and would be a stage on the road to world domination by the United States”.

The “Novikov Note” didn’t acquire as much symbolic value as Kennan’s telegram (whose author was later given the moniker “the Architect of the Cold War”). Novikov himself, who did not fully share the views of Molotov and Stalin regarding relations with America, was relieved of his duties as ambassador by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 25 October 1947 because “he betrayed the trust of the Central Committee”, however the Soviet authorities let him off “with a slap on the wrist”. He simply gave up work as a diplomat and pursued academic and literary activity.

Source:

MILITARY LITERATURE - Memoirs - Nikolai Novikov. Memoirs of a diplomat. - M.: Politician, 1989.