The following collection of documents recounts the dramatic story of the British embassy’s retreat from Moscow to Kuibyshev during the height of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in late 1941.

Barbarossa was launched on 22 June 1941. Seventeen days after the first onslaught, 300,000 Soviet prisoners, 2,5000 Soviet tanks, 1,400 Soviet guns, and 250 aircraft had been captured on Army Group Centre’s front alone, while many hundreds of Soviet aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. To the West, the prospect of Soviet Russia’s survival looked bleak. On 20 July 1941, with Barbarossa barely a month old, the Foreign Office had obtained information from secret sources, intimating that extensive preparatory measures were underway to deal with a possible evacuation of Moscow. The intelligence suggested that the majority of government departments had already been transferred to various cities in the interior (No.1). Events on the ground were also discouraging. Two days after these reports, Moscow experienced its first air raid: three firebombs even hit the British embassy and a serious fire was started on the roof. The raid had lasted nearly six hours and British and Soviet Russian embassy staff fought hard to keep the fire under control until the fire brigade took over. Damage to the roof was considerable but fortunately there were no injuries (No.2).

The military threat to Moscow would pass momentarily until the autumn of 1941, as the German armies turned north and south in an attempt to capture Leningrad and the Ukraine. However, the German offensive towards Moscow resumed on 2 October 1941, when Army Group Centre spearheaded a major offensive, Operation Typhoon, to capture the Soviet capital. Between 6-8 October, the Germans chalked up successes at Bryansk and Orel (south-west of Moscow), and encircled six Soviet armies, commencing the battle of Vyazma. These events sparked a mass evacuation of Soviet women and children from Moscow, which began on 11 October. The British Ambassador to Moscow, Sir Stafford Cripps, was by now extremely concerned about the safety of his Mission. On 12 October, he challenged Andrei Vyshinski, the deputy Soviet Foreign Minister, demanding to know whether the present situation made it advisable for him to consider sending out surplus staff. Vyshinski felt that there was no need to send anyone away at present and that if such a need arose he would at once let Cripps know (No.3). Cripps was aware that he could not show too great a lack of confidence in the Soviets by ignoring Vyshinski’s advice, while the Soviets, for their part, did not wish to appear weak in front of their allies by retreating, which might preclude the possibility of further military assistance.

However, on 14 October the Germans captured Mozhaysk, west of Moscow, and a day later they took Kalinin, 160km north-west of the city, and a key town in the approaches to Moscow from Leningrad. Discipline and morale soon began to crumble and a million people started to leave the city. On 15 October, Cripps telegraphed the Foreign Office urgently stating that the Soviet Government was leaving Moscow immediately and that the entire Diplomatic Corps and Mission was setting off for Kuibyshev that night. There was, however, still some doubt within the Foreign Office as to whether figures such as Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, were actually going to leave Moscow (No.4).

Molotov had sent for Cripps at 12.30 p.m. on 15 October and explained that the military situation was such that the entire Diplomatic Corps must leave for Kuibyshev the same evening. A special train would be placed at their disposal, and this would, in all probability, be ‘the last opportunity’ for any foreigner to leave the capital. This announcement placed on Cripps a greatly increased responsibility for the future welfare of his official staff and nationals in a citywhich might well be surrounded, heavily bombarded and eventually starved into surrender by German forces. However, Cripps, along with the US Ambassador, was told that although the Soviet Government were not leaving that evening, they – and Molotov himself – would leave by air shortly and almost certainly be in Kuibyshev before them. If the government intended to stay, Cripps had a duty to remain in Moscow with a skeleton staff regardless of the risks involved, and to evacuate the rest of the staff and all British subjects. Cripps’s overriding concern was always to avoid being cut off from the Soviet government. But Molotov robustly refused the British and US Ambassadors’ request to remain and, according to Cripps, practically forced them to leave (No.5).

To organise, at eight hours’ notice, the departure of the entire staff of the British embassy, of the military mission and of other British subjects in Moscow was no easy task. Preparations had been made for a potentially hasty evacuation but the uncertainty surrounding a possible evacuation had left these plans in a state of flux. At the embassy compound a bonfire was lit on the tennis court and large quantities of correspondence were burned. Eventually, after many difficulties of transport, the whole party, consisting of 89 people, was assembled in the waiting room of the Kazan Station by 10 p.m. Heavy sleet was falling as confidential papers and cyphers were dragged through blackout conditions and floods of refugees trying to escape the city. To a journalist the scene at the station looked like a ‘cavern of damned souls…for whom this retreat meant, perhaps the end of all things’. The party finally left Moscow at 1.30 p.m. Some of the embassy documents, the military mission’s radio equipment and other essentials were dispatched by car the following day with an armed escort (No.6). The journey took four and half days, and seemed to consist chiefly of hour-long waits at tiny wayside stations and between stations. Cripps recalled that the most immediate problem had been food: ‘it required a great deal of ingenuity and perseverance to obtain even a hunk of black bread’. They arrived at Kuibyshev on the morning of 21 October, tired and very dirty, but all in good health.

Kuibyshev was a city with a population of half a million but was about to double in size during the next few days. The embassy and the mission were lodged at the ‘Pioneers’ Palace’, which was like a barracks. The accommodation was not satisfactory; lacking office equipment and even a single plain table. Some of the beds were infested with bugs, and the washing, sanitary and cooking facilities were totally inadequate. More worrying was the fact that Vyshinski seemed to be the only government representative to have arrived in Kuibyshev and he had to refer to Moscow on any minor issue. On 21 October Cripps angrily told Vyshinski it was impossible to work in Kuibyshev without contacts with Molotov, Stalin or Anastasias Mikoyan, Minister of Trade. It was also useless for the Military Mission to remain in Kuibyshev without contacts with the General Staff. Cripps therefore wanted to return to Moscow at once (No.7). To calm matters, Molotov did arrive on 22 October and Cripps understood that the transfer of the entire Government would shortly be effected. Within a few days Cripps himself improved his position by renting a bungalow, which he shared with the heads of missions and which would accommodate the main offices of the improvised embassy. In early 1942, a new British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr (later Lord Inverchapel) arrived in Kuibyshev. He faced similar problems to his predecessor – Stalin and Molotov would remain in Moscow and nothing much could be achieved with Vyshinski. However, following the improvement in the military situation by the summer of 1943, the full diplomatic corps was eventually allowed to return to Moscow.

FCO Historians
June 2006