On 30 June 1945, T. V. Soong and his retinue, aboard a specially chartered American airplane, landed in Moscow. Soong was to start his mission in the Soviet capital without much hope of prevailing over the Russians. Bargaining with Stalin, begging for American support, and waiting constantly for clarification of policies from Chongqing together would drive Soong to the verge of mental and physical collapse. In mid-July, after returning to Chongqing from the first round of negotiations, Soong complained to Ambassador Hurley: “I am a broken man. I am personally ill from overstrain and overwork.” It took one and a half months and thirteen difficult sessions, with an interruption during the Potsdam Conference, for the conferees in Moscow to conclude their negotiations. In the end, Soong did not attach his signature to the new agreements between the Chinese and Soviet governments. That formality was performed by Wang Shijie, who succeeded Soong as foreign minister during the Potsdam interval. This substitution was not a trivial matter. It reflected the KMT government's awkward position in concluding the agreements with Moscow. T. V. Soong must have remembered how the Shandong question in 1919 had caused nationwide protests in China. He did not want to become a scapegoat for Chiang Kai-shek's policy in the Moscow negotiations, which resulted in humiliating concessions to Soviet demands in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia.