American and British Relations with Russia

Report Outline
Soviet-American Cooperation in World War II
Great Britain and the Soviet Union
American-Soviet Backgrounds
Soviet and American Differences

Soviet-American Cooperation in World War II

Basic Russian-American Agreement of 1942

The United States and the U. S. S. R. are cooperating in World War II under an agreement “on the principles applying to mutual aid in the prosecution of the war against aggression” signed between Secretary of State Hull and Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff on June 11, 1942. Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov, who had completed a five-day visit to Washington on June 4, participated in the shaping of the Russian-American agreement. Molotov had flown to Washington from London, where he had negotiated a 20-year mutual assistance treaty with Great Britain.

The document signed at Washington pledged the continued adherence of the United States and Soviet Russia to the principles of the Atlantic Charter. It acknowledged, on the part of the Government of the United States, “that the defense of the U. S. S. R. against aggression is vital to the defense of the United States of America,” and accordingly provided for speeding the flow of materials for defense to the Soviet Union under the lend-lease system. In return, the U. S. S. R. was pledged to provide “such articles, services, facilities or information as it may be in a position to supply.”

In the first paragraph of the Washington agreement, the two governments declared “that they are engaged in a cooperative undertaking, together with every other nation or people of like mind, to the end of laying the bases of a just and enduring world peace securing order under law to themselves and all nations.”