Litvinov, Maxim Maximovich

(Meir Moisevich Wallach)

(1867–1951)

   Soviet foreign minister. As a young revolutionary from the predominantly Jewish town of Bialystock, Litvinov joined a cell of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, and served a term of imprisonment before escaping abroad in 1902. In exile he formed a close relationship with LENIN, then returned to Russia as a worker in the underground. After the abortive 1905 revolution, he fled to Paris and then London. There he worked as a publisher’s clerk and became the principal Bolshevik agent. In 1916 he married Ivy Low, the niece of the historian Sidney Low.

   One of the first acts of the newly-established Soviet government in November 1917 was to appoint Litvinov as its unofficial representative in London. He was expelled in September 1918 in reprisal for the similar treatment of the British agent in Moscow. Litvinov was then appointed to the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, and by 1930 had risen to be its head. From that time he served as people’s commissar for foreign affairs (i.e., foreign minister) till 1939, when he was removed from office and replaced by Molotov. After HITLER’S attack on Russia, Litvinov reemerged from the political wilderness and was sent as ambassador to Washington. He arrived in December 1941, on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the war. He was recalled to Moscow in 1943 and became one of several deputy commissars for foreign affairs under Molotov until his final retirement in August 1946.