Message to F. Roosevelt (Correspondence Vol. 2, No. 6)

Mr President,
I have not yet received the text of your message, but on November 2 Mr Steinhardt, the United States Ambassador, delivered to me through Mr Vyshinsky an Aide-Memoire giving its substance.
I should like first of all to express complete agreement with your appraisal of the results of the Three-Power Conference in Moscow, which should be
credited primarily to Mr Harriman and to Mr Beaverbrook who did their best to bring the Conference to an early and successful conclusion. The Soviet Government is most grateful for your statement that the implications of the Conference will be carried out to the utmost. Your decision, Mr President, to grant the Soviet Union an interest-free loan to the value of $1,000,000,000 to meet deliveries of munitions and raw materials to the Soviet Union is accepted by the Soviet Government with heartfelt gratitude as vital aid to the Soviet Union in its tremendous and onerous struggle against our common enemy - bloody Hitlerism.
On instructions from the Government of the U.S.S.R. I express complete agreement with your terms for granting the loan, repayment of which shall begin five years after the end of the war and continue over 10 years after expiration of the five-year period.
The Soviet Government is ready to do everything to supply the United States of America with such commodities and raw materials as are available and as the United States may need.
As regards your wish, Mr President, that direct personal contact be established between you and me without delay if circumstances so require, I gladly join you in that wish and am ready, for my part, to do all in my power to bring it about.

Yours very sincerely,
J. Stalin
November 4, 1941