Minute from Jack Molloy to Frederick H. Boland (London)
(Copy)

Please refer to my report of 30th April last¹ of my conversation with Mr. Georgi Rodionov, First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy. Mr. Rodionov asked me on the phone last week to lunch with him again on Tuesday, 24th instant, and, with your concurrence, I accepted his invitation.

2. Mr. Rodionov took me to the well-known Spanish Restaurant, ‘Casa Pepe’ in Dean Street, Soho, (the lunch on the 18th April was in the Dorchester). He said that he often dined at this restaurant. On arrival, he asked for his ‘usual table’ which turned out to be a table for two situated at the end-wall of the restaurant. As on the occasion of our previous meeting, he was very pleasant and genial. When I mentioned that I had not returned his hospitality, he said that there should be ‘no protocol between you and me’; in seeing me his wish was not only to get a knowledge of economic and political conditions in Ireland, but to have the pleasure of my company; further, he liked to be sociable and to meet and enjoy the company of his diplomatic colleagues in London. He said that the material I had sent him (listed in my report of 30th April last) had been very useful to him; people in his country were quite ignorant of conditions in present day Ireland and he had sent a report to Moscow on the subject, based on the information and material I had given him; he thought that he was the first person in the Soviet Embassy in London ever to send such a report. He stressed that his object in contacting me was to get a general picture of conditions in Ireland; he had no desire to extract ‘secrets’ from me. As First Secretary at the Embassy in charge of reporting on economic and political conditions in Great Britain, he had also to interest himself to some extent in conditions in countries neighbouring on Great Britain, and Great Britain and Ireland could be regarded as a geographical and strategic unit and in some sense as an economic unit. He did not ask me to send him further material on Ireland.
3. In the course of general conversation, Mr. Rodionov said that recent incidents such as the alleged attack by Soviet planes on a Swedish plane over the Baltic² and the action against the Foreign Office wireless operator (Marshall),³ in which Mr. Kuznetsov (Second Secretary at the Soviet Embassy) was said to be implicated, were plots against his country which could not be regarded in isolation as they were, in fact, part of a larger campaign to discredit the Soviet Union instigated in the main by ‘the Americans’. The Americans were obsessed with hatred of the Soviet Union and were leading the countries of Western Europe into measures designed to weaken the position of the Soviet. At the current meetings between Eden, Schuman and Acheson, the latter would dictate to the others. In his opinion the ‘Kuznetsov incident’ had been ‘well timed’ to coincide with the departure of Mr. Zaroubin⁴ to Washington. Similar ‘secrets’ charges had been made against the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa some years ago when Mr. Zaroubin was Ambassador there⁵ and the idea behind the timing of the ‘incident’ in London was to try to give Mr. Zaroubin a bad start in Washington.
4. In reply to a question on the recent changes in Soviet heads of mission abroad, he said that he had seen the newspaper comments that the posting of Mr. Gromyko⁶ to Great Britain was part of a design to effect a split between Great Britain and the United States. He did not put much credence in such comments; he, personally, thought that it was impossible in any event to split Great Britain and the United States. He referred in favourable terms to the recent speech by Mr. Herbert Morrison welcoming the arrival of Mr. Gromyko and said that the making of such speeches by prominent politicians certainly did no harm and might lead to improved relations. He added that any change in Heads of Missions abroad after some years was on the whole a good thing. He knew Mr. Gromyko personally as he had worked with him in the Foreign Office in Moscow. He had not met Mr. Zaroubin until he (Rodionov) came to London. Mr. Rodionov has been here for two years and said that he was going home on leave to Moscow on 12th July next for a holiday of about two months.
5. He enquired as to our balance of payments position and as to whether events in Persia and Egypt had had any effect on us. I gave a brief account of our balance of payments position from my knowledge of published information on the subject and said, as regards Persia, that the closing of the refinery at Abadan had affected us to the extent that, as a member of the sterling area, we had to look elsewhere for oil supplies. Mr. Rodionov, in reply to a question, said that it was part of his job to watch (from London) British relations with Middle East and Far East countries but not with the United States. He enquired as to my position in detail (more so than on the occasion of our first meeting) viz., how long I had been in the Department of External Affairs, in what other Government departments had I served, what were my university qualifications, whether I had served at any other posts abroad, etc. He said that he assumed that in your absence I acted as Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy. He asked when you were going on leave and for how long. I said that I did not know.
6. Mr. Rodionov said that he would be pleased to see me again at any time and that if I wished I could ring him at the Embassy. He was in full charge of ‘his side of the Embassy’ and responsible to no one. In reply to a question he said that he was, of course, subject to the general supervision of his Ambassador but tried to give me the impression that such supervision was nominal. He stressed that he had no ulterior motive in contacting me, stating that his main reason was to get a picture of economic and political conditions in Ireland today and also to meet me socially as one of his colleagues in the Diplomatic Corps.