On 15 December 1939 President Edvard Beneš, then in exile in London, reported to the Czechoslovak underground in Prague that he had just received word from Zdenek Fierlinger, his envoy in Moscow, that the Soviet Narkomindel had requested Fierlinger's legation to cease any further activity in the Soviet capital as of 1 January 1940. Beneš called it "quite a sad message", and rightly so. A mere six weeks before, Beneš, in a previous message to Prague, had stated that Czechoslovakia's policy toward the USSR (in spite of the Russian failure to come to Czechoslovakia's aid at the time of Munich) would continue to be one of "mutual sympathy and friendship". On that occasion he also expressed his hope that the Soviet Union "would do nothing that would do us harm in the political sphere".¹