Litvinov Maksim Maksimovich (1876-1951)

Litvinov Maksim Maksimovich (real name: Meir-Genokh Moiseevich Ballakh) (1876, Bialystok, Grodno Governorate – 1951, Moscow), statesman and diplomat.

He received a traditional Jewish religious education and later graduated from a Realschule (technical secondary school). From 1898 he was a member of the RSDLP, carrying out propaganda in workers’ circles. In 1900 he was a member of the Kiev Committee of the RSDLP and was arrested the same year. In 1902 he escaped from Lukyanovka Prison (Kiev) and emigrated, working on transporting revolutionary literature into Russia.

In 1904 he illegally returned to Russia and took part in the Revolution of 1905–07; he was one of the founders of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn (October 1905), and a delegate to the 3rd RSDLP Congress (1905). From 1906 he lived in emigration. In 1907 he served as secretary of the London group of the RSDLP and secretary of the RSDLP delegation at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International; he represented the Bolsheviks in the International Socialist Bureau.

In 1918 he became the representative of the RSFSR in Great Britain, was arrested by British authorities, and was exchanged for the British intelligence officer R. Lockhart. From 1918 he was a member of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In 1920–21 he served as plenipotentiary, trade representative, and SNK commissioner for currency operations in Estonia. From 1921 he was deputy commissar for foreign affairs; concurrently he was a member of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate and deputy chairman of the Main Concessions Committee.

In 1922 he was deputy head of the Soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference and head of the Soviet delegation at the Hague Conference. In 1923 he chaired the Moscow International Disarmament Conference, served as deputy chairman of the Main Concessions Committee under the SNK of the USSR, and took part in concluding several trade agreements with European countries. From 1927 to 1930 he headed the Soviet delegation on the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference in Geneva.

From 1930 to 1939 he served as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, leading Soviet delegations at the League of Nations Disarmament Conference (1932), at the World Economic Conference in London (1933), and from 1934 to 1938 representing the USSR in the League of Nations. From 1934 he was a member of the Central Committee of the VKP(b); in 1941 he was expelled. He was also a member of the CIK and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st and 2nd convocations.

From 1941 to 1946 he served as Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and simultaneously from 1941 to 1943 as Soviet ambassador to the United States, and from 1942 to 1943 as Soviet envoy to the Republic of Cuba.