The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's, 1932-1943

633 Pages·2015·10.18 MB·English

by  Gabriel Gorodetsky

THE
MAISKY
DIARIES
Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s
1932-1943
EDITED BY GABRIEL GORODETSKY
THE MAISKY DIARIES
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THE
MAISKY
DIARIES
RED AMBASSADOR
TO THE COURT OF ST JAMES’S
1932–1943
EDITED BY GABRIEL GORODETSKY
Translated by Tatiana Sorokina and Oliver Ready
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2015 Gabriel Gorodetsky
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.
For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.com
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Typeset in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maiskii, I. M. (Ivan Mikhailovich), 1884–1975.
The Maisky diaries : red ambassador to the Court of St James’s, 1932–1943 / edited by
Gabriel Gorodetsky.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-18067-1 (alk. paper)
1. Maiskii, I. M. (Ivan Mikhailovich), 1884–1975. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Diplomatic
history. 3. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—1917–1945. 4. Ambassadors—Great
Britain—Diaries. 5. Ambassadors—Soviet Union—Diaries. 6. Soviet Union—Foreign
relations—Great Britain—Sources. 7. Great Britain—Foreign relations—Soviet Union—
Sources. I. Gorodetsky, Gabriel, 1945- editor. II. Title. III. Title: Red ambassador to the
Court of St James’s, 1932–1943.
D754.R9M28 2015
327.47041092—dc23
2015016351
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction xi
The Making of a Soviet Diplomat xxviii
Prologue 1
1934 6
1935 31
1936 57
1937 74
1938 98
1939 154
1940 247
1941 328
1942 409
1943 464
End of an Era: Maisky’s Recall 530
The Price of Fame: A Late Repression 546
Illustration Credits 562
Index 563
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Acknowledgements
This diary is published with the permission of the Scheffer-Voskressenski family – Ivan
Maisky’s heirs. I am most grateful for their cooperation and assistance in the prepara-
tion of this volume. I should also like to thank the Russian Foreign Ministry, the custo-
dians of the Maisky diaries, for allowing me access to the original diaries, and for their
help with archival sources and photographs. Particular gratitude is due to Professor
Itamar Rabinovich, former president of Tel Aviv University, for his assistance in raising a
generous grant towards the costs of the translation of the diary into English.
Few publishers today would enthusiastically embrace a project which involves the
publication of three large volumes of a heavily annotated diary. I am grateful to John
Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, and his team for their continuing
unstinting support. I owe a special debt to Robert Baldock, the managing director of the
London office of Yale University Press (who had commissioned my earlier book, Grand
Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia), for his abiding faith in me. No one
could wish for a more perceptive, knowledgeable and supportive editor. It was he who
convinced me, in addition to the complete three-volume edition, to produce a single
compendium of excerpts from Maisky’s diaries, which would be accessible to a wider
audience. The result, a lavish book, beautifully produced, is a testament to his unrivalled
skills.
This book is the fruit of more than ten years of extensive research. I was most fortu-
nate to profit from a series of generous fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study
at Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Freiburg, and the Rockefeller
Foundation’s Bellagio Center. They provided most conducive conditions for pursuing
my work, and a fertile ground for testing and sharing my ideas with leading fellow
historians. The lion’s share of my work, however, was done under the auspices of All
Souls College, Oxford. It was Isaiah Berlin, a legendary fellow of the college, who first
introduced me to Oxford in 1969 and encouraged me to write my dissertation there;
the circle was miraculously closed for me when I was first offered a visiting fellowship
at All Souls in 2006 and subsequently elected as a fellow. I can hardly find the proper
words to describe the friendships I have forged at All Souls, and the challenging yet
congenial environment I have encountered at the college – undoubtedly a guardian of
scholarship in its purest form. Sir John Vickers, the warden of the college, and John
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viii Acknowledgements
Davis, the former warden, made me feel at home and spared no effort in providing me
with the utmost assistance and encouragement.
I was extremely fortunate to have Tatiana Sorokina and Oliver Ready as translators
of the diary. Their combined efforts have produced a meticulous and elegant transla-
tion that is convincingly idiomatic yet faithful to Maisky’s unique literary prose. I was
equally fortunate in having Clive Liddiard as my copy-editor. His succinct yet wise and
punctilious interventions improved the text considerably, as did his mastery of the
Russian language and familiarity with Slavic and East European cultures.
Special appreciation is due to Hillel Adler, who initially helped me set up a most
sophisticated database which allowed us to tame and master a voluminous body of
archival sources. Dr Ruth Brown was equally helpful in organizing the glossary of the
more than a thousand people mentioned in the diary. Dr James Womack produced
some exquisite translations from the Russian of various letters in Maisky’s private
archives.
Finally, Ruth Herz, my wife, friend and companion, would be the first to admit that,
rather than a burden in our life, the years spent with Maisky represented a fascinating
joint journey.
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