Changes

On November 16, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt ended almost 16 years of American non-recognition of the Soviet Union following a series of negotiations in Washington, D.C. with the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov.

President Roosevelt decided to approach the Soviets in October 1933 through two personal intermediaries: Henry Morgenthau (then head of the Farm Credit Administration and Acting Secretary of the Treasury) and William C. Bullitt (a former diplomat who, as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, was informally serving as one of Roosevelt’s chief foreign policy advisers). The two approached Boris Shvirsky, the Soviet Union’s unofficial representative in Washington, with an unsigned letter from Roosevelt to the Soviet Union’s official head of state, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin. The letter intimated that the U.S. Government would be willing to negotiate the terms for recognizing the Soviet Union, and requested that Kalinin dispatch an emissary to Washington. In response, Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov journeyed to Washington in November 1933 in order to begin talks.

====Talks frustrated by Soviet debt owed to US====

Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were always been problematic and this was true after the USSR was founded. Despite strong commercial ties during the 1920s, relations did re-open until FDR to formalize US/USSR relations. Even after formalization, the Soviet Union was never particularly vested in adhering to terms of the 1933 agreement. Ultimately, the US and the USSR would maintain a wary alliance during World War II to counter the German threat.