Nikolai Novikov was the Soviet ambassador to the United States between April 1946 and October 1947. In September 1946 Novikov reported to Moscow in response to George Kennan‘s ‘Long Telegram‘:
“The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopolistic capital, is characterised in the post-war period by a striving for world supremacy. This is the real meaning of the many statements by President Truman and other representatives of American ruling circles: that the United States has the right to lead the world. All the forces of American diplomacy – the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, industry and science – are enlisted in the service of this foreign policy.
For this purpose, broad plans for expansion have been developed and are being implemented through diplomacy and the establishment of a system of naval and air bases stretching far beyond the boundaries of the United States, through the arms race, and through the creation of ever newer types of weapons…
[American leaders] hoped that during the Second World War they would succeed in avoiding, at least for a long time, the main battles in Europe and Asia. They calculated that the USA, if it was unsuccessful in completely avoiding direct participation in the war, would enter it only at the last minute, when it could easily affect the outcome of the war, completely ensuring its interests… It was thought that the main competitors of the United States would be crushed or greatly weakened in the war, and the United States, by virtue of this circ*mstance, would assume the role of the most powerful factor in resolving the fundamental question of the post-war world…
The USSR’s international position is currently stronger than it was in the pre-war period. Thanks to the historical victories of Soviet weapons, the Soviet armed forces are located on the territory of Germany and other formerly hostile countries, thus guaranteeing that these countries will not be used again for an attack on the USSR. In formerly hostile countries, such Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and Romania, democratic reconstruction has established regimes that have undertaken to strengthen and maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union. In the Slavic countries that were liberated by the Red Army or with its assistance – Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia – democratic regimes have also been established that maintain relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of agreements on friendship and mutual assistance.
The enormous relative weight of the USSR in international affairs in general, and in European countries in particular, the independence of its foreign policy, and the economic and political assistance that it provides to neighbouring countries, both allies and former enemies, has led to the growth of the political influence of the Soviet Union in these countries and to the further strengthening of democratic tendencies in them. Such a situation [is] regarded by the American imperialists as an obstacle in the path of the expansionist policy of the United States…
Obvious indications of the US effort to establish world dominance are also to be found in the increase in military potential in peacetime and in the establishment of a large number of naval and air bases both in the United States and beyond its borders. In the summer of 1946, for the first time in the history of the country, Congress passed a law on the establishment of a peacetime army, not on a volunteer basis but on the basis of universal military service. The size of the army, which is supposed to amount to about one million persons as of July 1st 1947, was also increased significantly… Expenditures on the army and navy have risen colossally…
Along with maintaining a large army, navy, and air force, the budget provides that these enormous amounts also will be spent on establishing a very extensive system of naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans… All of these facts show clearly that a decisive role in the realisation of plans for world dominance by the United States is played by its armed forces…
The American policy in China is striving for the complete economic and political submission of China to the control of American monopolistic capital. Following this policy, the American government does not shrink from interference in the internal affairs of China. At the present time in China, there are more than 50,000 American soldiers. In a number of cases, American Marines participated directly in military operations against the people’s liberation [communist] forces. The so-called “mediation” mission of General Marshall is only a cover for interference in the internal affairs of China.
The “hard-line” policy with regard to the USSR… is at present the main obstacle on the road to cooperation of the Great Powers. It consists mainly of the fact that in the post-war period the United States no longer follows a policy of strengthening cooperation among the Big Three (or Four) but rather has striven to undermine the unity of these countries. The objective has been to impose the will of other countries on the Soviet Union… The present policy of the American government with regard to the USSR is also directed at limiting or dislodging the influence of the Soviet Union from neighbouring countries… Such a policy is intended to weaken and overthrow the democratic governments in power there, which are friendly toward the USSR, and replace them in the future with new governments that would obediently carry out a policy dictated from the United States. In this policy, the United States receives full support from English diplomacy.
One of the most important elements in the general policy of the United States, which is directed toward limiting the international role of the USSR in the post-war world, is the policy with regard to Germany. In Germany, the United States is taking measures to strengthen reactionary forces for the purpose of opposing democratic reconstruction. Furthermore, it displays special insistence on accompanying this policy with completely inadequate measures for the demilitarisation of Germany… One cannot help seeing that such a policy has a clearly outlined anti-Soviet edge and constitutes a serious danger to the cause of peace.
The numerous and extremely hostile statements by American government, political and military figures with regard to the Soviet Union and its foreign policy are very characteristic of the current relationship between the ruling circles of the United States and the USSR. These statements are echoed in an even more unrestrained tone by the overwhelming majority of the American press organs. Talk about a “third war,” meaning a war against the Soviet Union, even a direct call for this war – with the threat of using the atomic bomb- such is the content of the statements on relations with the Soviet Union by reactionaries at public meetings and in the press.”
