Record of a Conversation with a Czechoslovak Government Delegation, July 9, 1947

Source: Tom 18

Record of a Conversation with a Czechoslovak Government Delegation, July 9, 1947

Present on the Soviet side: V.M. Molotov, interpreter.

Czechoslovak side: Prime Minister K. Gottwald, J. Masaryk, and others.

The conversation concerned the question of Czechoslovakia's participation in the Paris Conference on the Marshall Plan.

Stalin: We consider the Marshall Plan an attempt by the Americans to impose their economic and political control over European states. The plan aims to isolate the Soviet Union and create an anti-Soviet bloc.

Gottwald explained that the Czechoslovak government had already accepted the invitation to the Paris Conference, but that it was prepared to reconsider.

Stalin: The Soviet government does not wish to impose its will on anyone. But we must be frank. If Czechoslovakia participates in the Paris Conference, this will be regarded as an act directed against the USSR. The Americans will use Czechoslovakia's participation to demonstrate that the Soviet Union's friends are abandoning it.

Stalin emphasized that the real aim of the Marshall Plan was not the economic recovery of Europe but the creation of a Western bloc under American leadership. He urged the Czechoslovak leaders not to fall into this trap.

After the conversation, the Czechoslovak government reversed its decision and declined to participate in the Paris Conference.

Note

This conversation was decisive in Czechoslovakia's refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan. Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister (son of the founder of Czechoslovakia, T.G. Masaryk), reportedly said after the meeting: "I went to Moscow as a free minister and returned as Stalin's lackey." Masaryk died under mysterious circumstances in March 1948, during the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia.