(Testimony of Richard Edward Snyder Resumed)
Mr. Dulles.
About $500, isn't it, roughly---10 to 1 in those days?
Mr. Snyder.
Wait a minute; yes.
Mr. Dulles.
It was a considerable sum.
Representative Ford.
It would be more than a month's salary, then.
Mr. Snyder.
Yes; an average month's salary at the time was about 750 rubles, something around there.
Mr. Dulles.
I think the legal rate was 20 cents, but the sort of going rate was around 10, I think. I think you could buy tourist rubles around 10, as I recall--10 to the dollar. The legal rate, I think, was 5 to the dollar.
Mr. Snyder.
No; I think the legal rate was 10 to a dollar, Mr. Dulles.
Mr. Chayes.
In the same letter that states the date, which we supplied to the Commission at the Commission's request, it states that the legal rate was to 1 until January 1961. But that was the official rate.
Mr. Dulles.
I understand.
Mr. Snyder.
There were different rates. The official rate was not the rate which was used for all things. For instance, we got 10 to 1 for our rubles. The so-called official rate was used, for instance, in clearing foreign trade accounts and this sort of thing.
Representative Ford.
Can you tell us your impression of this so-called Red Cross in the Soviet Union?
Mr. Snyder.
Well, again, I cannot speak of--about the Soviet Red Cross with any great personal knowledge. It is not a Red Cross organization in quite the sense in which we know it. It is clearly an organ of the State in a totalitarian state, which means it is not an independent organization, and its policies flow from the policy of the state, and of the central committee.
I don't think that the Soviet Red Cross conducts public fund-raising campaigns, for instance, in the way ours does.
It also is not an organization to which an individual might turn routinely for assistance as he might in our society.
Since the Soviet State does not admit that there is need in the Soviet Union, that there can be poverty or difficulty for which there are not organizations already in existence who are fully competent to deal with such problems, since they don't admit this kind of a situation--they also do not admit of public welfare organs in a sense such as the Red Cross.
Representative Ford.
Do you know of any other cases during your period of service there where there were payments by this organization to American citizens, or Americans,. those who had given up or tried to give up or failed to give up their citizenship?
Mr. Snyder.
No, sir; as a matter of fact, the only way in which the Soviet Red Cross impinged upon my experience in Moscow was that they were the organ for handling whereabouts inquiries of persons living in the Soviet Union. If an American citizen wrote to the Embassy asking our assistance in locating a relative in the Soviet Union, this inquiry would go from us to the Soviet Red Cross, who was charged under the Soviet system of things with actually checking into it and letting us know if they felt that was in their interest. This was the only way in which the Soviet Red Cross impinged upon us.
I do recall on a few occasions advising persons who had come into the Embassy in one way or another and who were in dire need that they go to the Soviet Red Cross.
But the reaction of such persons indicated to me that they felt the Soviet Red Cross was not the place to go.
Mr. Coleman.
Mr. Snyder, had you ever heard, while you were in the Embassy in Moscow, the secret police referred to as the Red Cross?
Mr. Snyder.
No.
Mr. Coleman.
You never heard the MVD, for example, referred to in that way?
Mr. Snyder.
No; to my knowledge--I mean there is an organization called the Soviet Red Cross, which carries on at least in the international sphere some of the normal activities of international Red Cross organizations.
The big point of departure is that they on the one hand are not independent organizations as they are in free societies, but they are an organ of the state.
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