Note from a Conversation with the 1st Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR, Comrade Pimenov on 10 February 1957

Embassy of the Pyongyang, 14.II.1957

People’s Republic of Poland

in Pyongyang [trans. note:  barely legible tilted stamp]

Secret

N o t e

From a conversation with the 1^st Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR, Comr[ade] Pimenov on 10.II.1957.

I invited Comr[ade] Pimenov to go hunting.  In the course of the hunt and on the way back, the following issues, as well as less important ones, were brought up:

1) The recalling of Comr. Petrov, a counselor at the Embassy.  Comr. Petrov was recalled at the end of August 1956.  He was recalled, asserted Comr. Pimenov, for incorrectly assessing the group of people who during Kim Il Sung’s visit to the countries of People’s democracy strove to execute certain changes and changes in the government, i.e., the removal of Kim Il Sung.  (This group, as we have already informed, had been removed at the August party plenum and taken into the party at the September one).  Comr. Pimenov implied that Petrov had known this group’s objectives and supported it.  Comr. Pimenov maintained that now, too, the Soviet comrades assess this group’s goals as correct, except that the goal of removing Kim Il Sung was wrong and a mistake.  For these reasons Comr. Petrov has been recalled.

To add to the above matter, the Embassy explains:  We had received no note about Petrov’s recalling.  Petrov had worked as the Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of the USSR a.i., i.e., in the period when Kim Il Sung was in the countries of people’s democracy.  We received information (about which we wrote in a report for September 1956, p. 13) that some of the persons from this group acting against Kim Il Sung maintained that this group’s intentions are known and had been agreed on with some highly placed employees of the Embassy of the USSR.

[transl. note:  report continues]