Saturday, 4 February

Twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, Yiwei year

Peter Petrovich Konchalovsky passed away at the age of eighty, in Moscow, the day before yesterday. He was the son-in-law of Zurikov, one of two greatest painters of Russia. (The other was Repin.) When Konchalovsky was about thirty or forty years old, he lived in Paris, therefore he was influenced by the French-style. Painters in the world view him as the best among the modern Soviet painters. As a matter of fact, he and Gerasimov had their own respective specifications. When I was in Moscow, we were quite close to each other. He always came to the Chinese Embassy to eat Mongolian hot-pot. Also, he always came out to my villa in the countryside. Because of regulations, his paintings could not be sold to foreigners. Under the name of his government, the Norwegian ambassador had put forward a request to the Soviet government for permission to buy from Konchalovsky two paintings for the Norwegian (National) Art Gallery. The price paid was 150,000 roubles. Based on the official exchange rate it was US$25,000.

Both Konchalovsky and his wife were close to me, and he always wanted to give me his paintings, but he had to wait for the right timing. It happened that when Chiang Ching-kuo visited Soviet Union in 1946, he brought with him several tens of Tianjin pears as a gift to me. I invited Konchalovsky and his wife to try the pears and they asked if I would give them a few pears so that they could enjoy them with their family members. I agreed. Several days later, Konchalovsky presented me with an oil painting, which was a still-life using the Tianjin pears as the subject. The coloring and plotting was far superior to the paintings sold to the Norwegian Government. This made my friends in the Moscow Diplomatic Corps greatly envious when they saw it. He also presented me with two water-colours. Those were the only paintings that I could get but another one during my time as the Chinese Ambassador to Soviet Russia was my portrait by Gerasimov, as well as the poems written for me by poet [blank]. Konchalovsky was in good company with his wife. They had a son, and their daughter-in-law was a Spaniard. They had three grandchildren. Now I learn of his death I am very sad.

Bulganin wrote to Eisenhower again. He stated again the suggestion of a possible non-aggression pact, and said the Soviet Union is willing to make the same pact with Britain and France. America and Britain think that it only serves the purpose of propaganda.