Maxim (Maximovich) Litvinov

Russian politician and diplomat, born in Bialystok, NE Poland. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Party (1898), was exiled to Siberia (1903), but escaped. At the Revolution he was appointed Bolshevik ambassador in London (1917–8). He became deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs in 1921, then commissar (1930–9), achieving US recognition of Soviet Russia (1934). He was dismissed in 1939, but reinstated after the German invasion of Russia, and became ambassador to the USA (1941–3) and vice-minister of foreign affairs (1943–6).

Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (ru: Макси́м Макси́мович Литви́нов) (July 17, 1876–December 31, 1951) was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet diplomat.

Born Meir Henoch Mojszewicz Wallach-Finkelstein (simplified into Max Wallach, Макс Ва́ллах) into a wealthy Jewish banking family in Białystok in Congress Poland, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898.

When the Russian government began arresting Bolsheviks in 1906, Litvinov left the country and spent the next ten years living in London, where he was active in the International Socialist Bureau.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Litvinov was appointed by Vladimir Lenin as the Soviet government's representative in Britain. However, in 1918, Litvinov was arrested by the British government and held hostage until exchanged for Robert Lockhart, a British diplomat who had been imprisoned in Russia.

Litvinov was then employed as the Soviet government's roaming ambassador. In February 1929 he concluded the Litvinov's Pact in Moscow, signed by the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Latvia and Estonia, in which those countries promised not to use force to settle their disputes (this was seen as an 'Eastern Kellogg-Briand Pact').

In 1930, Joseph Stalin appointed Litvinov as Narkom (Minister) of Foreign Affairs. A firm believer in collective security, Litvinov worked very hard to form a closer relationship with France and Britain. Roosevelt sent comedian Harpo Marx to the Soviet Union as a good-will ambassador, and Litvinov and Marx became friends and even performed a routine on stage together.

After the Munich Agreement between Britain, France and Germany in September 1938 and Western inaction after Germany's occupation of what remained of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 had clearly demonstrated the unwillingness of the Western Powers to participate in collective security against the Axis Powers together with the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign policy was adjusted to face the new realities and Litvinov was replaced as foreign minister in early May 1939, in order to facilitate the negotiations that led to the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany, signed by Litvinov's successor, Vyacheslav Molotov, in August of that year.

After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in June 1941, Joseph Stalin appointed Litvinov as Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs.

Perhaps more than anyone else, the businesslike diplomat helped to bring the Soviet Union out of its post-revolutionary isolation; however, Litvinov bluntly condemned Stalin's policies during and after the war with Germany although he was supportive of the general Soviet policy during the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 as evidenced by Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who interviewed him while in Moscow.

After Litvinov's death his wife returned to live in Britain.

His grandson Pavel Litvinov is a Russian physicist, writer and a Soviet-era dissident.