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July 30, 1943

Mr. V. Bazykin
Embassy of the USSR
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. Bazykin:

I wrote you on July 13th., in response to your request that I furnish you with the names of artists and artists' organizations who I might believe would be glad to send congratulatory messages to the Kukryniksi, that I was putting the matter in the hands of "Artists for Victory" as the agency both constituted and best qualified to get a quick and wide response. Yesterday I received the letter of which I send you a copy.

In my correspondence with VOKS and with individual Soviet artists I have tried always to be truthful about the deplorably lagging morale of America artists and about what I believed to be the negligence of our governmental agencies in making greater use of art to promote a clearer understanding of the issues of the war and a more fervent spirit in support of it. It is in the same spirit that I send you the Artists for Victory reply. You might as well know the truth. I am to be blamed for having turned to them. I have had no part in their councils and, knowing that the organization had become wide in scope, I believed that it was motivated by a spirit consistent with its high sounding name. I should have known that an organization dominated, as this one is, by the National Academy of Design must be essentially as narrow and ignorant as the letter reveals it to be.

While Artists for Victory is dominated by the National Academy, the Academy mind is not characteristic of the mind of the majority of American artists. There are thousands who, individually and through their organizations, would have responded heartily to word that an exhibition in Moscow honoring the work of the Kukryniksi was being held. I regret that through my serious error in judgement these thousands were not reached. on my official authority as President of the Artists League of America and as a lecturer on art who has had contact with many organiz-