Very Uncommon Autograph Letter Signed of Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

Soviet relations with the United States chilled after World War II as the Soviet Union exerted its influence – or simply imposed its will – on the satellite states of Eastern Europe.  Then came the Communist takeover of China, which the Soviets applauded. The Korean War began in 1950, and the Soviets gave their support to the Communist government in North Korea.  When American nuclear research produced the hydrogen bomb in 1952, the Soviets followed suit in 1953. But the death of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in March 1953, and the Korean armistice that summer, cooled tensions somewhat, as a new regime took control in the Soviet Union.

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planned to tour the Soviet Union in 1954, in order to write about it in her syndicated newspaper column “My Day,” but she had to cancel the trip the day she was scheduled to leave because the Soviet government denied visas to her translator and the others traveling with her.  She was disappointed, and complained that the Soviet government seemed afraid of more interaction with the outside world.

Her opportunity to go there finally came in 1957. She traveled to the Soviet Union with her secretary, Maureen Corr, and her friend and personal physician, Dr. A. David Gurewitsch, who spoke fluent Russian, and his wife Edna.  The group visited Moscow, where they saw the circus and the ballet, and Leningrad, Tashkent, Samarkand, Sochi, and Yalta, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had met with Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in February 1945.  Mrs. Roosevelt wanted to see everyday life, and she toured schools, churches, mosques, factories, hospitals, and a state farm.  Though she complained that the Soviets tightly controlled what she could see, she nonetheless saw long lines at grocery stores and signs of poverty.  Soviet life and Soviet ideology, she said, were a “mass of contradictions.”

Mrs. Roosevelt spent 2½ hours interviewing Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s military suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in late 1956, the discussion was chilly – and indeed Mrs. Roosevelt did not know until the last minute whether Khrushchev would even see her.  The two debated ideology and foreign policy, and Mrs. Roosevelt ultimately told her readers that the American-Soviet relationship required “understanding on our part, respect for [Soviet] achievements, but a firmer belief in the possibilities of our own system.”  After the recording stopped, in response to Khrushchev’s question whether he could tell Soviet newspapers that the conversation had been friendly, Mrs. Roosevelt said that he could say “that we have had a friendly conversation but that we differ.”  Laughing, Khrushchev said, “At least we didn’t shoot each other!”

Lewellyn E. Thompson was one of the most important American diplomats of the 20th Century.  He was the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, serving two separate tours in the administrations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and then acting as advisor to Richard M. Nixon.  Few Ambassadors faced as many crises as Thompson did in Moscow – the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Russia, the great confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union over Berlin and the building of the Berlin Wall, very difficult summits between Soviet Premier Khruschev and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the August 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and tensions over the Vietnam War. But there were also steps toward better relations. At Thompson’s suggestion, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the U.S. in 1959. Thompson helped arrange (and was present for) the 1967 summit in the U.S. between President Johnson and Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, after the Six-Day War in the Middle East exacerbated tensions. Also in 1967, the Soviet Union and U.S. agreed to begin cooperation in space, with the joint Soyuz-Apollo program. The first treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed on July 1, 1968.

Thompson was serving as Ambassador in Moscow when Mrs. Roosevelt visited there, and his wife Jane was with him. Autograph Letter Signed, on stationery of the National Hotel, Moscow, September 9, 1957, passing along a gift to Jane Thompson, and expressing regret that she missed her in Moscow.  “This little package was given me by Ebba Swarz for you.  We are sorry to miss you but hope before Dr. David Gurewitsch & I have to leave on Sept. 28th you may be back.”  Mrs. Swarz was a Swedish author.

After returning to the United States, Mrs. Roosevelt sought to increase travel between the two nations.  She told readers that she hoped “for the sake of our country and our people” that she could “make you see the reasons why our misunderstandings are so great, and some of the things we must do if war and extermination are not to be the answer for both the people of the U.S. and the people of the Soviet Union.”  She returned to the Soviet Union herself in September 1958, and Khrushchev visited her twice in the United States.

This letter comes from the Thompson descendants. A photograph of Mrs. Roosevelt at President Roosevelt’s grave at Hyde Park, New York, accompanied by Premier and Mrs. Khrushchev and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, accompanies the letter.