Wednesday, 5 May

Had a nice dream last night. It is not easy to have nice dreams when you are the Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
All the Polish Embassy personnel are leaving here tonight. I asked Counsellor Liu to represent me in saying good bye to them. Polish diplomatic matters will be handled by the British Embassy on its behalf. The Iranian Ambassador said on 25 April, the Polish Ambassador received a telephone call at 11.00 p.m. asking him to go to the Kremlin to see the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Molotov. On arrival, Molotov read out the document about the ceasing of diplomatic relations to the Polish Ambassador and then gave it to him. The Polish Ambassador said such a document was unacceptable, so he got up and left immediately. Molotov then sent this formal notification to the Polish Embassy, The Polish Ambassador returned it. Such a move by the Polish Ambassador is quite strange. This afternoon the Polish Ambassador went to see the Afghanistan Ambassador (the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps) telling him that since he had to leave Moscow in a hurry, therefore he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to all the other Ambassadors, and asked him to say goodbye for him. The Afghanistan Ambassador informed us by phone, and this interchange is very normal.
Last month the assistant Military Attaché‎ Zhang was recalled to the country and I then wrote a report for him to take back to the Generalissimo to report about everything, all the work I have done, and the difficulties I have encountered here. Today I received a telegram from The Generalissimo, saying he had received my letter dated 21 March. He hoped I could help improve the Sino-Soviet relationship.
This morning I went to the market with Military Attaché‎ Guo. Everything was so unbelievably expensive. Beef cost about 500 roubles (US$40) a kilo, Chicken for 300 roubles (US$30), Milk for roughly 30 roubles, should be about 50 Chinese dollars. I did not dare buy anything to eat.