68 J.-A. PEMBERTON
recognise the Soviet government and that passport regulations fell ‘short
of according visitors from the Soviet Union complete equality with rep-
resentatives of other countries prevented this proffered cooperation from
materializing.’^208
The situation in respect to the participation of the Moscow group was
a source of deep regret to the Pacific Council which regarded the USSR
as a very important Pacific power, as had, according to Akami, IPR mem-
bers from the outset. The council thus expressed its unanimous intention
to ensure that the choice of the location of the next conference would
take into account the interests of the Moscow group.^209 At the council,
Carter stated the following:
It must be clear that one of the most important determinants of the place
of the next conference should be this. The conference must be held in a
country where the Soviet members of the Institute of Pacific Relations may
freely come in accordance with the law of the land and not in violation of
it. One of the first duties of the Secretary-General will be to arrange for an
early personal presentation in Moscow of the results of Banff, the consen-
sus of opinion with reference to Soviet participation, and the studies pro-
posed for the next conference.^210Carter duly fulfilled the promise he made at the Pacific Council: in
1934 he journeyed to Moscow in order to make a personal presentation.
As a consequence of his journey, Akami points out, ‘the Pacific Ocean
Institute, a branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences,’ that is, what
Holland and Mitchell called the Pacific Institute of the USSR, ‘became
the Soviet unit of the IPR.’^211 Akami observes that the fact that the
Soviet national unit of what was an unofficial organisation was a gov-
ernmental body was not of particular concern to Carter, noting in this
connection that Carter travelled to Moscow again in 1936 in order to
urge Soviet participation in the Yosemite conference. Although he obvi-
ously was successful in that particular endeavour, as it turned out and
leaving aside the presence of a Russian observer at the 1929 conference,
Yosemite was the only occasion on which the USSR would participate in
(^209) Ibid., viii–ix; and Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 173.
(^210) Lasker and Holland, Problems of the Pacific, 1933, ix.
(^211) Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 173.
(^208) Lasker and Holland, Problems of the Pacific, 1933, viii.