Between the Revolution and the West: A Political Biography of Maxim M. Litvinov

255 Pages·1992·3.676 MB·English

by  Hugh D Phillips

Official portrait of Maxim M. Litvinov taken for his
sixtieth birthday, 1936. (Photo courtesy of the Hoover
Institution Archives, Joseph Freeman Collection)
BETWEEN
THE REVOLUTION
AND THE WEST
A Political Biography of
Maxim M. Litvinov
Hugh D. Phillips
Westview Press
BOULDER • SAN FRANCISCO • OXFORD
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Copyright © 1992 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published in 1992 in the United States of America by Westview Press, Inc., 5500 Central
Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301'2847, and in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 36
Lonsdale Road, Summertown, Oxford 0X2 7EW
Library of Congress Cataloging'in'Publication Data
Phillips, Hugh D.
Between the revolution and the West : a political biography of
Maxim M. Litvinov / Hugh D. Phillips,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0'8133'1038'5 (cloth)
1. Litvinov, M. M. (Maksim Maksimovich), 1876-1951.
2. Revolutionaries—Soviet Union—Biography. I. Title.
DK268.L5P48 1992
947.084'092—dc20 91-41681
[B] CIP
Printed and bound in the United States of America
© The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Lola and Walter Phillips

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 From Bialystok to Britain 1
2 Diplomatic Baptism: The First Soviet Representative
to Britain 17
3 Keeping the Lines Open: Litvinov and the West,
1918-1920 31
4 The Conferences at Genoa and the Hague 47
5 Litvinov and the Origins of Soviet Disarmament
Policy: The Moscow Conference of 1922 59
6 Years of Drift and Waiting, 1923-1927 71
7 Propaganda and Disarmament, 1927-1928 87
8 Becoming the New Foreign Commissar 101
9 Litvinov and Soviet Foreign Policy on the Eve
of Hitler’s Ascendency 115
10 Reorienting Soviet Foreign Policy 125
11 The Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact 135
12 The Decline and Fall of Litvinov 153
13 The Last Years 169
vii
viii CONTENTS
Conclusion 177
Notes 181
Selected Bibliography 111
About the Book and Author 237
Index 239
PREFACE
MAXIM MAXIMOVICH LITVINOV’S LIFE was surely one of
the most interesting of modern times. The issue of a couple with a
total of six previous marriages, he grew to adolescence within the
Jewish “Pale of Setdement” in an atmosphere of uncertainty and
insecurity. After serving in the military, he plunged into the Russian
revolutionary movement and eventually became one of Lenin’s chief
underground operatives. After risking his life and liberty in this
fashion for almost eight years, he arrived in England in 1908.
There he experienced the relative political freedom of the island
that had impressed other revolutionaries, for example, Edward Bern­
stein, and met his English wife, Ivy. After the October Revolution of
1917, however, he returned to serve the new state and eventually
headed the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs during the tumultuous
and tragic 1930s. After a brief fall from grace, he was ambassador to
the United States during World War II, and during his last years he
was, as William Taubman aptly put it, the “first major postwar dissi­
dent.”1 Despite a lifetime of dissent, he died a natural death, with his
family at his side, in the twilight of Stalin’s Russia.
This book attempts to describe and analyze Litvinov’s extraordi­
nary life on the basis of the available archival and published materials,
and I hope the story will also illuminate aspects of the revolutionary
movement and the first decades of Soviet diplomacy. The reader,
however, should be warned that these pages do not contain a compre­
hensive account of either of the last two historical phenomena; Litvi­
nov’s activities were a thread running through a larger fabric that is
beyond the bounds of this book.
Also, the reader will find lengthy passages from only a few of
Litvinov’s innumerable public speeches. Anyone even remotely inter­
ix
X PREFACE
ested in the man is probably already familiar with his famous slogan
of the 1930s that “peace is indivisible” and with his fiercely eloquent
denunciations of Nazism and the West’s appeasement of Hitler. These
points have long been a matter of public record, and what I have tried
to do is to go beyond the speeches to understand the man who made
them.
A couple of points about some material need to be made. First, I
was twice denied access to the USSR’s Foreign Ministry Archive,
including an effort in the summer of 1990, in the era of “glasnost,”
when I got only as far as the foyer. Perhaps in the future I can progress
beyond those forbidding walls on Ploshchad’ Smolenskaia, where
Litvinov’s personal papers are deposited. Second, I was able to peruse
the papers of Ivy Litvinov, the commissar’s companion and wife of
almost forty years, and I also interviewed their son and daughter,
among others. These sources added significantly to my understanding
of Litvinov the man and his politics; on both counts, he was quite
remarkable.
Hugh D. Phillips
Bowling Green, Kentucky
Notes
1. William Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente or Detente
to Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 133.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE RESEARCH, ORGANIZATION, and writing of this biogra­
phy were some of my primary preoccupations for almost a decade. I
ran up quite a debt during those years, and it is a distinct pleasure to
publicly acknowledge that fact.
First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Lola and Walter
Phillips, who stood by me morally and financially through it all. To
them I affectionately dedicate this book.
I also received substantial institutional support. The Interna­
tional Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) enabled me to spend the
1982-1983 academic year at Moscow State University on the Graduate
Student and Young Faculty Exchange, and a large part of this book
rests on the foundation IREX so generously provided. The Graduate
School of Vanderbilt University and the University of Alabama in
Huntsville also provided travel funds, and the Kennan Institute for
Advanced Russian Studies made possible a month of research in
Washington, D.C. My friends Steve and Roxanne Burant and Mike
Adcock did their bit to make my stay in Washington a most pleasant
one.
The Faculty Research Committee of Western Kentucky Univer­
sity was exceptional in its generosity. Three separate grants enabled
me to travel to the Public Record Office and the Hoover Institution
and to make a final wrap-up trip to Moscow. The last excursion was
also facilitated by grants from IREX and the American Council of
Teachers of Russian.
Many individuals have assisted me in my study of Litvinov and
Russian history. Hugh Ragsdale first sparked my interest in the field,
and I hope that after he has read this book he will not rue having
done so. At Vanderbilt University, the late Forrestt Miller supervised
xi