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From a Bolshevik to a British Subject: The Early Years of Maksim M. Litvinov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2017

Hugh Phillips
Hugh Phillips*
Affiliation:
Western Kentucky University
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Extract

Maksim M. Litvinov was the most colorful and controversial of the major European diplomats in the 1930s. As Henry Roberts has observed, Litvinov's “chubby and unproletarian figure radiated an aura of robust and businesslike common sense that was in striking contrast to the enigmatic brutality of the Politburo.” But this cultured and reflective man served that Politburo for the better part of his life, and he did so until his disillusionment overwhelmed him, and he made a complete break with the policies of the Soviet leadership. The obvious question is why Litvinov continued this bizarre relationship so long—one between the cosmopolitan “citizen of Geneva” and the reclusive and often violent men in the Kremlin. A definitive answer is, of course, impossible given the sources, but a clue can be found in an examination of Litvinov before the Bolshevik Revolution, a topic that has received virtually no attention from western scholars. As will be shown, the rotund and cooly analytical diplomat was for a considerable period of time a man wholly dedicated to violent revolution—and not just in the abstract. Litvinov was one of the apparatchiki of the movement who was not afraid to get his hands dirty in the sometimes messy business of fomenting revolution. Litvinov changed greatly over the course of his life, but it seems clear that for a few decades he was never fully able to repudiate these early years. Therefore he remained at his post, continuing to serve the government that sprang from the revolution, even as his own disillusionment grew.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , Fall 1989 , pp. 388 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

I would like to acknowledge the support reeeived in the preparation of this article from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and the Research Council of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. A revised version of this article was presented at the 1983 meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. This study is part of a larger work in progress, “Between the Revolution and the West: A Political Biography of Maksim M. Litvinov.”

1. Roberts, Henry L., “Maxim Litvinov” in The Diplomats, ed. Craig, Gordon A. and Gilbert, Felix (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953; reprint, New York: Athcneum, 1963), 345 Google Scholar.

2. At least one specialist has erred in his characterization of Litvinov before 1917. Roberts wrote that Litvinov was “never the lirebrand,” ibid., 345. More typical is Georg von Rauch's statement that the young Litvinov engaged in the “illegal procurement of arms”; von Rauch, Georg, A History of Soviet Russia, 6th ed. (New York: Praeger, 1972). 215–216 Google Scholar. There is, of course, much more to the story than arms procurement.

3. Pope, Arthur Upham, Maxim Litvinoff (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1943), 32–33 Google Scholar. Pope's work is the only book-length study of Litvinov in English and suffers from a paucity of sources and a pronounced pro-Soviet bias when dealing with Litvinov's political career. Pope's account of Litvinov before the 1917 Revolution, is quite useful and is based on interviews with Litvinov conducted during the early years of World War II.

4. Pope, Litvinoff, 34–35; Ivy Litvinov, “Vstrechi i razluki,” Novyi Mir 7 (1966): 241. Ivy, a writer and translator, was Litvinov's wife, and this article is her only published work about her husband. Henceforth, Meer Vallakh will be referred to as “Litvinov,” although he used many pseudonyms before settling on it. His reasons for picking this name are unclear.

5. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov, Brighton, England, 30–31 March 1981.

6. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov; Pope, Litvinoff, 36–38.

7. Kornev, N., Litvinov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1936), 16–17 Google Scholar. Kornev's work is the only biography of Litvinov published in book form in Soviet Russia. Clearly meant as propaganda, it is of limited value at best. Perhaps the most significant thing about Kornev's book is the date of publication, 1936, which suggests that Stalin had not yet rejected Lilvinov's foreign policy ideas, which favored collective security and the west.

8. Pope, Litvinoff, 38. The specifics of Litvinov's joining the party, for example, who recruited him, are not known.

9. The author of the party literature is not indicated in any of the sources; ibid., 39; Z. S. Sheinis, “Papasha,” Prometei 7 (1969): 82. Sheinis wrote a complete biography of Litvinov in the late 1960s but has only published fourteen articles in various Soviet journals. (Litvinov's son and daughter both feel that Sheinis's work is too uncritical and that it glosses over important events while elaborating the trivial.) The quality of his work is uneven, but it is worth noting that he did have access to party and state archives. Litvinov's son and daughter believe firmly that former Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, was responsible for blocking publication of Sheinis's complete study. They believe that Gromyko, who came into (he Foreign Commissariat in 1939 as a result of (he purge surrounding Litvinov's dismissal, carries a personal enmity toward their father and would prefer that Litvinov be forgotten. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov; interview with Mikhail Litvinov, Moscow, 3 November 19X2. This suspicion is well founded. Gromyko took a personal interest in publications on Soviet foreign policy. He is, for example, an editor of the standard Soviet texts, Isioriia diplomalii, 5 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1975), and Istoriia vneshnei politiki S.S.S.R., 2 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). In addition, lesser foreign policy officials of the early Soviet period have received biographical treatment. See, for example. V. V. Sokolov, Na boevykh postakh diplomaticheskogo fronta: zhizn' i deiatel'nost’ L.M. Karakhana (Moscow: Politizdat, 1983); Nikolai Zhukovskii, Diplomaty novogo mira (Moscow: Politizdat, 1982). After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Sheinis's articles began to reappear in Soviet journals, and Sheinis's hopes were revived that his entire manuscript would be published in the near future (interview with Z. S. Sheinis, Moscow, 22 October 1986). Finally, in an article in Moscow News, Sheinis announced that his long-suppressed manuscript would be published soon (Z. S. Sheinis, “A Long Road.” Moscow News 21 [1987]: 16). Two points must be made: first, in 1970 Novyi Mir announced that Sheinis's book would be published and, second, Moscow News article suggests that Sheinis has made no changes in the manuscript he completed in 1967. Its publication will, of course, be welcome and should be very useful, but a great deal of new documentation on Litvinov's diplomatic career has become available since Sheinis first wrote in the 1960s. Sheinis's book has been published: Maksim M. Litvinov: Revoliutsioner, diplomat, chelovek (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1989).

10. Litvinov said that a young man was responsible for turning the Social Democrats over to the police, but he held no animosity. “The boy,” said Litvinov, “was at an age when people easily change their minds” (interview with Tatiana Litvinov).

11. Pope, Litvinoff, 38–39; Sheinis, “Papasha,” 82–83; Haimson, Leopold H., The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 117–120 Google Scholar.

12. Maksim M. Litvinov, “O leninskoi Iskre,” Istorkheskii arkhiv 2 (1961): 140; Interview with Tatiana Litvinov. Leopold Haimson has related that an early Russian Social Democrat, Solomon Schwarz, told him that it was quite the norm for the “most dedicated, the most active young Social Democrats” to become followers of Lenin, who represented the more radical and decisive faction of the party (Leopold Haimson, preface to The Russian Revolution of 1905, Solomon Schwarz [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971], ix.

13. Sheinis, “Papasha,” 84; Pope, Litvinoff, 45.

14. Litvinov, “O leninskoi,” 143–144; Sheinis. “Papasha,” 85–86.

15. Sheinis, “Papasha,” 85.

16. Litvinov, “O leninskoi,” 143.

17. Ibid., 144.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., 145–146.

20. Sheinis, “Papasha,” 86.

21. Ibid., 87.

22. Litvinov, “O leninskoi,” 146.

23. Ibid., 147.

24. Ibid., 148.

25. Ibid., 149. Litvinov argued unsuccessfully with lurii Martov and other Menshevik leaders that Lenin should retain control of Iskra, See Ulam, Adam. The Bolsheviks (New York: Collier, 1968), 195–196 Google Scholar.

26. Sheinis, “Papasha,” 93.

27. “Perepiska N. Lenina i N. K. Krupskoi s M. M. Litvinovym,” Proletarskaia revoliulsiia (1925): 75.

28. Ibid.. 76.

29. Ibid., 77–78.

30. Ibid., 78.

31. Treadgold, Donald W., Twentieth Century Russia, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rund McNally, 1964), 75–77 Google Scholar.

32. Sec Sablinsky, Walter, The Road to Bloody Sunday (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

33. Riasanovsky, Nicholas, A History of Russia, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 452 Google Scholar.

34. Litvinov's memories of his days at Novaia zhizn’ are in M. Ol'minskii, ed., Novaia zhizn': Pervaia legal'naia Bolsheviskaia gazeta (Leningrad: Priboi. 1925) 1: vii-xi.

35. S. S. Khromov and A. L. Narochnitskii, chief cds.. Istoriia rabochego klassa S.S.S.R., 3 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1979-) vol. 2: Rabochii klass v pervoi rossiiskoi revoliutsii, 1905–1907 gg (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 105. An interesting, if almost unrecognizable, photograph of Litvinov in 1905 appears on p. 113 of this volume.

36. Ibid., 240.

37. Pope. Litvinov, 74–75.

38. Z. S. Shcinis, “Vodvoritel’ oruzhiia.” Nauka i zhizn’ 7 (1966): 19.

39. Ibid., 20. Shcinis writes that his account is based on “what Litvinov later remembered.” but he gives no sources.

40. Ibid., 21.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 22. Sheinis writes only (hat Litvinov “vanished into the air.”

43. Ibid., 23–24.

44. Bibineishvili, B., Kama (Moscow: Staryi Bolshevik, 1934), 112 Google Scholar. This biography of the eccentric and physically imposing revolutionary Kamo, who helped Litvinov with the smuggling mission, contains a brief note by Litvinov on the incident.

45. Sheinis, “Vodvoritel’ oruzhiia,” 25.; Pope, Litvinoff, 95–96.

46. Pope, Litvinoff, 96. Litvinov supplemented his income as a tour guide and language tutor. Ivy Litvinov, “Vstrechi,” 243.

47. Ivy Litvinov, “Vstrechi,” 245; interview with Tatiana Litvinov. Discussing with one of his “close friends,” his upcoming nuptials Litvinov admitted that he soon would be married and added, “but you understand that she is from the bourgeoisie.” further evidence that Litvinov felt that his revolutionary career was coming to an end. Sheinis, Z. S., “Londonskie gody M. M. Litvinova,” Novaia i noveishaia isloriia 4 (1986): 120 Google Scholar.

48. Elwood, R. C., “Lenin and the Brussels ‘Unity’ Conference of July 1914,” The Russian Review 39 (1980); 33–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheinis. “Londonskie gody,” 115. Significantly Litvinov only told his wife, Ivy, who was vaguely socialist in her politics, that he knew Lenin alter the October Revolution. Sheinis, “Londonskie gody,” 121.

49. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov. According to the biographer of Ivy Litvinov, John Carswell, the future commissar “came to like England and … even to exaggerate the strength of its social system.” Carswell, John, The Exile (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983), 68 Google Scholar. Carswell had exclusive access to Ivy Litvinov's personal papers and knew her lor many years. Pope, Litvinoff, 96.

50. New York World Telegram and Sun. 29 January 1953, 17.

51. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov.