The U.S. Vice-President Henry Wallace and Owen Lattimore’s Trip to the Soviet Union, China and Mongolia and the Impact on U.S.-Mongolian Policy
50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007
United States Vice President Henry Wallace and mongolist Owen Lattimore set out on a 27,132 miles trip on May 20, 1944 to the Soviet Union, China and Mongolia. Dispatched on a remarkable journey by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, these U.S. officials had a series of meetings with leaders of respective countries that touched on security as well as goodwill issues. This paper will re-examine the trip in the light of new data from the Mongolian archives in Ulaanbaatar and additional material from Lattimore’s memories with a particular focus on how the trip influenced American understanding of conditions in Mongolia and the formulation of American policy in Soviet Central Asia and the Far East in the last months of World War II.