Saturday, 14 October

Fine

Section Chief Chen Junsu cabled me that he has been approved to resign as Section Chief of the accounting office. He has now formed a bank called the Jiuyu Bank and he will be the assistant manager. He asked me if I wanted to buy some shares. I talked with Jingchen, and I invested US$2,000 and Jingchen US$500. I replied to his telegram with this.

Attaché Hu reported that Ambassador Harriman received American reporters this noon. He told them as follows: 1) There were hopes for the Polish negotiations of both sides, but Britain and the Soviet Union could only provide advice they could not force them to accept any proposal. 2) After dinner at Kerr’s place, Stalin and Churchill have decided on the Bulgarian problem. She also reported that according to the news from British-American reporters, Churchill still has a lot of business to negotiate here, which meant Far Eastern problems would be touched on, therefore he would not leave Moscow for a few more days. He has also met with the representatives of the Polish Committee of National Liberation and they said that it would be possible to form a coalition government. Probably Mikolajczyk would be the Prime Minister while someone from the Polish Committee of National Liberation would be Commander-in-Chief.

At 6.00 p.m. the Soviet Government invited the whole Diplomatic Corps to go to the Grand Theatre to watch performances. Churchill and Stalin were also present.  Everybody at the theatre welcomed them and applauded. Since the War of Resistance Stalin has never set foot in public venues. This was the first time in four years. During the interval, the Austrian Minister William Salter told me that during the banquet in the British Embassy, Stalin has talked to him about the Australian army’s fighting in the Pacific. During the banquet speech Stalin said the Allies should group together to defeat not only Germany but also other big enemies other than Germany. The first performance was O.V.Lepeshinskay in “Neuzel” with A.D. Bulgakov,C.M. & A.M. Messerer and others. It was quite good. The second one was the solos of M.D. Mihailov (Bass), N.D. Shpiller, M.P. Maksakova, and then the performances of the Red Army musical team and its choirs as well as the dancing team. They were quite good. The show ended at 9.00.