. . . [O]n
May 20 Ambassador von der Schulenburg had a long talk with Molotov in Moscow. The newly appointed Commissar for Foreign Affairs was in a “most friendly” mood and informed the German envoy that economic negotiations between the two countries could be resumed if the
necessary political bases for them were created. This was a new approach from the Kremlin but it was made cautiously by the cagey Molotov. When Schulenburg asked him what he meant by “political bases” the Russian replied that this was something both governments would have to think about. All the ambassador’s efforts to draw out the wily Foreign Commissar were in vain. “He is known,” Schulenburg reminded Berlin, “for his somewhat stubborn manner.” On his way out of the Russian Foreign Office, the ambassador dropped in on Vladimir Potemkin, the Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and told him he had not been able to find out what Molotov wanted of a political nature. “I asked Herr Potemkin,” Schulenburg reported, “to find out.”
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich