Wednesday, 27 December

Snow

Shaozhou cabled me that the difficulties in Xinjiang are greater than expected. Secretary Bu Daoming have been ordered to be sent to Xinjiang to discuss economic cooperation with the Soviet Union The Soviet side originally permitted the American side 500 lorries to transport on China’s behalf, but after the Ili Incident the Soviet side said that the road was not safe so it was stopped, His many difficulties were anticipated by me.

Today my loose stomach was better.

Yesterday the Soviet newspapers reported that the Hungarian provisional government was set up in Debrecen. General Bela is the Prime Minister, Janos (teacher and reporter) is responsible for diplomacy, Ferne internal politics, Istvan financial and Imre agricultural matters. As for policy it declared, externally it was pro-Soviet and internally it advocated land reform. I thought that recently the Soviet policy with regard to the states in Eastern Europe was that it wanted to prevent them being used as anti-Soviet. Probably the most anti-Soviet elements are big industrialists and land owners. After the German occupation, all big capitalists and industrialists were regarded as collaborators. Therefore, after liberation they had no place. Only big land owners were left. These big land owners escaped to other countries and did not collaborate with the enemy. So when the war was over they were allowed to return. They also asked for a revival of their land ownership. Therefore it was Soviet policy that when it liberated one region it would immediately implement land reform policy. In other words, big land owners would also be expelled. In this case these countries will no longer have anti-Communist and anti-Soviet elements. The Soviet Union will be safe then. As for Communising these countries, it seems it is not the present policy.