from a bolshevik to a british subject: the early years of maksim m. litvinov

From a Bolshevik to a British Subject: The Early Years of Maksim M. LitvinovAuthor(s): Hugh PhillipsSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 388-398Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2498994 .

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HUGH PHILLIPS

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

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 un- proletarian 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 re- lationship so long-one between the cosmopolitan "citizen of Geneva" and the re- clusive 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 consid- erable period of time a man wholly dedicated to violent revolution-and not just in the abstract.2 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.

Litvinov began life in 1876 as Meer Genokh Moiseevich Vallakh, the son of a Jewish produce merchant in Belostok, a small city near the border between the Russian and German empires. Relatively little is known of his early years, but in 1881 his father was arrested and imprisoned on the charge of having ties with "foreign hostile elements." He was held about six weeks, and on one occasion young Vallakh was allowed to visit him, an experience that made a deep impression on him, as he recalled more than sixty years later.3 Litvinov's upbringing was not otherwise remarkable. He at- tended the local Realschule and synagogue, although he termed the latter experience

I would like to acknowledge the support received in the preparation of this article from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University, the Kennan Institute for Ad- vanced 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. Henry L. Roberts, "Maxim Litvinov" in The Diplomats, ed. Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953; reprint, New York: Atheneum, 1963), 345.

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

3. Arthur Upham Pope, Maxim Litvinoff (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1943), 32-33. 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 Revo- lution, is quite useful and is based on interviews with Litvinov conducted during the early years of World War II.

Slavic Review 48. io. 3 (Fall 1989)



From a Bolshevik to a British Subject: The Early Years of Maksim M. Litvinov 389

"something like homework." Apparently never very religious, he left the Jewish faith at an early age and in his later years never felt any sympathy for Zionism.4

At the age of seventeen, Litvinov joined the Russian army-one way to escape the provincial confines of Belostok. Already he was consciously dissatisfied with his personal life and the conditions in Russia. He later told his daughter, Tatiana, that at this time he was acutely aware of the oppression of Imperial Russia and was forming vague hopes that someday he would see a Russia "without prisons." 5 That dream eventually led Litvinov to Marxism and revolution, and it is a great irony of his life that the revolutionary regime, which he served so faithfully, greatly increased the number of prisons and prisoners in Russia.

Litvinov's initial military service took him to Baku, a major petroleum center on the Caspian Sea. There he first made contact with a member of the Russian intelli- gentsia (Belostok was more than 70 percent Jewish). This fellow soldier, a lawyer by training, introduced Litvinov to the writings of Karl Marx and of the Russian radical publicists, Dmitrii Pisarev and Nikolai Dobroliubov. Litvinov devoured this literature passionately. At the same time, he began to develop his linguistic abilities, mastering Russian (the Vallakh family spoke Yiddish in the home) and beginning French and German. His military career was undistinguished, although he enjoyed the experience, got along well with his immediate superior, a Captain Slugov, and learned discipline and the virtues of a well-regulated and orderly life. He was discharged in 1898 ostensi- bly for a petty violation of the regulations. The real reason for his discharge was that Litvinov had refused to fire on workers during a strike in one of the Baku factories.6 It was his first act in defiance of the imperial regime.

Out of the army and unemployed, Litvinov learned of a job opening in Klintsy for an accountant with a knowledge of German. By now Litvinov was fairly fluent in Ger- man, but he knew nothing about bookkeeping. He wanted the job, according to his first biographer, N. Kornev, because it would enable him to establish ties with the working class. Litvinov, with characteristic aplomb, mailed an application to the factory, noting that he would arrive soon for an interview. Then he bought a book for self-instruction in accounting and spent day and night studying. He presented himself to the factory director, breezed through an exam and an interview, and became the new accountant.7 Determination, confidence, and intelligence characterized Litvinov well before his dra- matic years on the stage of European diplomacy at Geneva.

Soon, Litvinov moved to Kiev, where he obtained a managerial position in a sugar factory. Litvinov was now a member of the middle class, with a steady income. Yet he was chronically without funds because of a side of his life that was wholly unknown to his colleagues in other managerial positions in the factory. Most of his money was going to the underground Social Democratic Labor party, which Litvinov had joined in 1898 almost immediately upon his arrival in Kiev. Litvinov's party cell had eight mem-

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. Hence- forth, 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, Litvinioff, 36-38. 7. N. Kornev, Litvinov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1936), 16- 17. Kornev's work is the only biog-

raphy 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 Litvinov's foreign policy ideas, which favored collective security and the west.



390 Slavic Review

bers. Joining was, for Litvinov, the real beginning of his life.8 His first contributions to the party were his time and money. He bought, set up, and ran a printing press, turning out revolutionary pamphlets and leaflets by night.9 In 1901, however, Litvinov was arrested and received a two-year sentence for operating his illegal press. '

Many times the imperial system of imprisonment and exile produced results di- ametrically opposed to those desired by St. Petersburg. By Soviet standards, the discipline and supervision were often shockingly lax and opportunities for reading and conversation were usually plentiful. The result was an informal, but effective, school of higher learning for revolutionaries. Litvinov took full advantage of the system, reading further on socialism and the history of revolutions. Of greater immediate significance was his exposure to the emigre journal from Geneva, Iskra, and to the writings of one of its founders, Vladimir Il'ich Ulianov, soon to be known as Lenin. " Litvinov read the first Iskra articles with joyous excitement as Lenin called for a "relentless war with economism" and demanded a mass proletarian revolution. For Litvinov, Lenin's writings opened "new horizons" and called forth a "thirst for work." Talk, political and linguistic studies, and the humming of Verdi's arias no longer sufficed. Litvinov deter- mined to escape and establish contact with Lenin. 2 In his decision to follow Lenin, the young Litvinov confirmed his commitment to violent revolution.

Nine other political prisoners, including the future Soviet leaders and victims of

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 Gromnyko, was responsible for blocking publication of Sheinis's complete study. They believe that Gromyko, who came into the Foreign Commissariat in 1939 as a result of the 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 1982. 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, Istoriia diplomatii, 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 mnira (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). Fi- nally, 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 diplo- matic career has become available since Sheinis first wrote in tnie 1960s. Sheinis's book has been published: Maksim M. Litvinov: Revolilutsioner, 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).

1 1. Pope, Litvinoff, 38-39; Sheinis, "Papasha," 82-83; Leopold H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 117-120.

12. Maksim M. Litvinov, "O leninskoi Iskre," Istoricheskii arkhiv 2 (1961): 140; Interview with Tatiana Litvinov. Leopold Haimson has related that an early Russian Social Democrat, Solomon Schwarz,




Stalin's terror, Grigorii Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, joined with Litvinov in an attempt to break out. Litvinov was entrusted with planning the escape. Apparently the group established contact with Lenin because, after their escape, imperial police agents told the chief of the Kiev district that they had learned that the Foreign League of Social Democrats (which included Lenin and the Iskra group) had approved the attempt and had prepared false passports for the escapees.'3

On an August night in 1902, a small group of political prisoners in Kiev's Luk'ianova prison strolled into the prison courtyard for their daily exercise. Only a twenty-five-foot wall separated them from the world outside. Because political prisoners could receive visitors, Litvinov had been able to arrange for a contact to be waiting on the street. He casually leaned against the wall and watched as the others tried to make as much commotion as possible, running to and fro and shouting over a game of gorodki (similar to bowling). When Litvinov heard a signal beyond the wall, he leaped upon the lone guard with a concealed blanket, covering the man's head and wrestling him to the ground. Several times the men flung over the wall a flimsy rope made of sheets with a large metal hook at one end, eventually catching it at the top. While Lit- vinov held the guard, the others clambered up the sheet-rope and dropped to the street below. Litvinov followed. He recalled years later that the guard had been more or less sympathetic and had only resisted halfheartedly.'4

Having crossed the prison walls was, of course, not enough. Litvinov and the others were still in danger, because the warden immediately telegraphed news of the escape to St. Petersburg and from there the information was relayed to all border points and 295 towns of the empire.'5 The cumbersome and inefficient imperial police rumbled into operation.

Litvinov planned for the escapees to dash for the Dnieper River where a boat was waiting, but immediately he ran into trouble. Scrambling down a ravine, he struck a human body. It was Bliumenfeld, one of his comrades, who had collapsed because of a weak heart and the excitement of the breakout. Litvinov was five feet six inches tall, stocky, and muscular, but he was bleeding and frightened and was not physically up to the task of carrying Bliumenfeld. All around shots rang out, and the rainy night was filled with men's curses and the beat of horses' hooves as the police swarmed over Kiev. Litvinov decided to remain quiet and wait; he refused to leave his friend in such a helpless situation. Two hours had passed when Litvinov heard some of the searchers returning. From their violent oaths he knew that none of the others had been caught. 6

Soon Bliumenfeld felt well enough to move, but Litvinov had no idea where to go-they had certainly missed the rendezvous at the river. Desperate, they crawled on all fours out of the muddy ravine and across a vacant lot to the nearest street. Filthy from head to toe and in torn clothes, the two looked like the dregs of Kievan society, so they decided to act out the part openly. Pretending to be drunk, they reeled down the street, singing ribald songs. When they spotted a droshskii (a two-horse taxi carriage), they hailed it and demanded passage to the nearest tavern. Still feigning inebriation,

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, 1967], 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.



392 Slavic Review

but terribly frightened and nearly exhausted, they staggered into a dark corner of the sleazy inn that their driver had selected and finally fell asleep.17

Once awake, Litvinov began to worry. Bliumenfeld knew nothing of Kiev, having been in the city only since his arrest, but Litvinov had the address of a woman, the daughter of a veteran of the Polish uprising of 1863, who might help them. She lived on the other side of Kiev, however, and the day was dawning. Unable to travel openly in the daylight, the two fugitives, at Litvinov's suggestion, tottered from bathhouse to bathhouse, hiding in the steam-filled rooms as long as possible. That night they reached the woman's residence. She, in turn, sent them to a friend of hers, who promised to assist them in their flight from the city. 18

The fugitives hid for a few days in the home of their new friend and then made their way to the Zhitomirskii highway, following it to the nearest railroad station. There Litvinov and Bliumenfeld, posing as a land surveyor and his assistant, used their forged passports to obtain tickets for Vilnius, near the Prussian border. Before the train reached the city, however, they disembarked at a small station, where, according to a new plan worked out in Kiev, they met professional smugglers whose job it was to get the revolutionaries out of the country. For twenty-four agonizing hours the two escapees hid in a haystack from the mounted border patrols, who seemed to be ubiq- uitous. Suddenly the smuggler gave the signal and they all leapt to their feet and began running. Soon a joyous cry told Litvinov that after many grueling days, he was finally no longer inside the Russian Empire.19

From the border, Litvinov made his way to Berlin, where he wrote his mother three letters (intercepted by the imperial police), summarizing his ordeal. He assured her that he was fine, though physically and mentally exhausted. After resting for a few weeks, he boarded a cramped third-class railroad car bound for Zurich, the headquar- ters of Iskra.20 He and the other escapees soon journeyed a little farther to an outdoor restaurant on the banks of the Rhine where they held a well-lubricated reunion and sent a "congratulatory" telegram to the chief of the Kiev police, General Novitskii. It was signed "Chief of the Escape, Maksim Litvinov." 21

With the celebrations over, Litvinov joined the office of the Foreign League of Russian Social Democrats, which had been created in 1901 to aid socialist emigres and to coordinate the transport of Iskra into the empire. Soon Lenin selected Litvinov to supervise the latter activity.22 In his new job, Litvinov demonstrated his characteristic resourcefulness. He began by sending packages of the paper to assorted sympathizers and radicals in Russia. Since they could always claim that the packages arrived unbe- knownst to them, they were in no danger, he felt. As an irritant, Litvinov also sent Iskra to high-level governmental officials. To confound the imperial agents operating in Switzerland, Litvinov bicycled across the Swiss countryside, dispatching the paper from different towns and villages. He later explained that this plan made it impossible for imperial agents to determine exactly where Iskra was published. It also gave him a chance to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes-travel and appreciation of beautiful landscapes .23

17. Ibid., 144. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 145-146. 20. Sheinis, "Papasha," 86. 21. Ibid., 87. 22. Litvinov, "O leninskoi," 146. 23. Ibid., 147.




According to Litvinov, these methods of distributing Iskra were generally efficient and only a small number of issues fell into police hands. Such a system, however, could accommodate only a maximum of about 500 copies for each edition, so Litvinov sought other avenues. He used false-bottomed suitcases of people traveling into Russia, and he erilisted the help of sailors in the French merchant marine. The latter would regularly deliver Iskra in large quantities from Marseille to various ports on the Black Sea. Most of the papers that reached Russia, however, were delivered overland by professional smugglers. This practice was usually expensive, but, if the smugglers were socialists or simply bitterly hostile toward the imperial regime, they worked for little pay.24

This relatively happy period came to an end late in 1903. In that year the Russian Social Democrats split into two factions-the majority Mensheviks and the Bolshe- viks. A choice had to be made and Litvinov promptly sided with Lenin. In this new situation, Litvinov accepted Lenin's assignment to return to Russia illegally as an "agent of the Central Committee for the Northwestern Region."25 By early March 1904, Litvinov was once more inside the empire.26

With this event Litvinov's most ardently revolutionary period began. Litvinov established himself in Riga as the Bolshevik chief and worked there as a smuggler and as Lenin's advocate against numerous opponents. As the revolutionary storm of 1905 broke over Russia, he wrote to Lenin concerning the situation in Russia following a Bolshevik meeting at St. Petersburg in December of 1904. He said that R. S. Zemliachka, with whom Litvinov was supposed to be working, "does not in the least realize what a sorry and critical situation we are in," as compared with the Men- sheviks, and she "refuses to come to any agreement with me" but wastes time on "long and boring speeches."27 Litvinov demanded action. He wanted the immediate preparation of a party congress, which should be carried out without coordination with the Menshevik-controlled Central Committee. Litvinov intended for this congress to establish a new central committee-"our Central Committee," as Litvinov put it. The Bolsheviks must go further: "In my opinion we can and should come out openly . . . to declare that in the present abnormal conditions . . . strict loyalty [to the Central Committee] is impossible. We are being pushed onto the path of revolution.28

Litvinov ended this report pessimistically, noting that the Bolsheviks had little support among the masses of workers in St. Petersburg and that swarms of Mensheviks had arrived in the city. Moreover,

the periphery, if not everywhere against us, then almost nowhere is for us. The broad mass of party workers still consider us a small group of disorganizers, without any forces of our own. . . . I repeat: our situation is extremely precarious and unsteady. Our only way out is immediately to call a congress (no later than Febru- ary) and get out a newspaper." 29

Lenin replied to Litvinov that he agreed with him "a thousand times" on the need for immediate action.30 In April 1905 the Bolsheviks did hold a congress in London. By

24. Ibid., 148. 25. Ibid., 149. Litvinov argued unsuccessfully with Iurii Martov and other Menshevik leaders that

Lenin should retain control of Iskra. See Adam Ulam, The Bolsheviks (New York: Collier, 1968), 195-196. 26. Sheinis, "Papasha," 93. 27. "Perepiska N. Lenina i N. K. Krupskoi s M. M. Litvinovym," Proletarskaia revoliitsiia 2

(1925): 75. 28. Ibid., 76. 29. Ibid., 77-78. 30. Ibid., 78.



394 Slavic Review

then, however, the situation in Russia was well on the way toward revolution with virtually no Social Democratic guidance.3'

When Litvinov wrote this letter, Imperial Russia was indeed a powder keg- Bloody Sunday was only weeks away. If Litvinov's call for revolution had been accepted in late 1904, it would almost certainly have met failure. Besides the evidence he presents on the lack of popularity and even contempt for the Bolsheviks among the working class, the plain fact was that Russia's workers, though discontented, were not yet ready for violent insurrection. The peaceful demonstration led by Father Georgii Gapon, on a Sunday in January 1905, revealed a powerful belief in moderate reforms through appeals to the emperor. Only after Nicholas II responded with bullets and Cos- sack sabers did Russia begin moving toward the strikes and barricades that marked the summer and autumn of 1905.32

Meanwhile, Litvinov, using the name "Felix," continued his propaganda work but apparently to little avail. By October, following numerous strikes, demonstrations, and the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei, Russia (and the world) witnessed the first successful general strike. Moreover, the strike was accomplished despite the lack of over- all planning. Paralyzed, the imperial government issued the October Manifesto, whereby Russia received, for the first time, a guarantee of basic civil liberties.33

Lenin immediately responded with the publication of a newspaper, Novaia zhizn', printed in St. Petersburg. Litvinov left Riga for the capital, where he was to assist in the daily administration and publication of the paper. When he arrived, he found that he was expected to have a paper on the streets within twenty-four hours despite the fact that he had virtually nothing with which to work-only a contract with a local printing shop. His "office" had neither furniture nor employees. A few volunteers were hastily assembled, but there were no vendors to peddle the new paper. Those who wanted it had to come to Litvinov's office on Nevskii Prospect, but Litvinov claimed that the first 15,000 copies "were practically torn from the hands" of his aides, eloquent testimony to the radicalization that Russia had experienced. Within a few days, Litvinov. working around the clock, had contracted for a second printer, organized a circulation de- partment, and had even persuaded "a few real experts" to work for him.34 As an offi- cial Soviet publication concedes, "all the practical work of publishing and distributing Novaia zhizn' was carried out by the tireless and elusive M. M. Litvinov-agent of the Leninist Iskra. " 3 The content of the paper was, of course, Lenin's responsibility, and he contributed almost daily.36

Litvinov was so successful in handling the newspaper that when the editors and administrators of all of St. Petersburg's dailies formed a committee to coordinate their activity against the obstacles placed before them by the police and postal authorities,

31. Donald W. Treadgold, Twentieth Centuiy Russia, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 75-77.

32. See Walter Sablinsky, The Road to Bloody Sunday (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 33. Nicholas Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,

1969), 452. 34. Litvinov's memories of his days at Novaia zhizn' are in M. Ol'minskii, ed., Novaia zhizn':

Pervaia legalt'naia Bolsheviskaia gazeta (Leningrad: Priboi, 1925' 1: vii-xi. 35. S. S. Khromov and A. L. Narochnitskii, chief eds., 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), IG5. An interesting, if almost unrecognizable, photograph of Litvinov in 1905 appears on p. 113 of this volume.

36. Ibid., 240.




they elected Litvinov as their chairman. All this time, Litvinov, who posed as "Ludwig V. Nietz," was a wanted political criminal.37 Soon, however, the situation became too dangerous. As the reaction set in, the more radical papers, including Novaia zhizn', were closed. On orders from Lenin, Litvinov left St. Petersburg for new and more dangerous work abroad-the purchase and transport of weapons and ammunition into the empire.

Litvinov next appeared in Paris in early 1906 with instructions to purchase "rifles, machine guns, small arms, and the necessary cartridges." His first order went to a Danish arms company, but when told that an oificer of the Danish army must come to Paris to supervise the sale Litvinov was stymied. To tell the truth-that the arms were intended for revolutionaries in the Caucasus region-was hardly practical. So Litvinov assumed the role of a French-speaking officer of the army of Ecuador. What he used for credentials is not known, but the deception was a success and the arms were procured.38 During the summer of 1906, Litvinov roamed the Continent placing orders in Brussels, Vienna, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. He became an accomplished impostor (a skill that may have helped him as a diplomat); for example, Litvinov posed as a representative of a Belgian firm in Germany. Equal in importance to his boldness and ingenuity were Lit- vinov's charming manners and dress and his, by now impeccable, French. All of these qualities were sorely tested during one week in Karlsruhe.

In that city Litvinov met with the director of a factory that produced the type of cartridges the revolutionaries needed. With his usual confidence, Litvinov told the director of his desire to buy the ammunition, only to be informed in reply that fortui- tously there were some officers from the Russian army in Karlsruhe for the same pur- pose, and that they were at that moment on the firing range for tests. The director concluded with a courteous offer to lend Litvinov his carriage to take him immediately to join the Russians. Litvinov realized that there was no escape, so he graciously accepted the director's offer and departed.

Surprisingly, the day passed without incident as the fugitive from the imperial regime and officers of the emperor's army fired round after round and then repaired to a local bar to imbibe round after round, Russian style. Litvinov admitted that he even came to like the officers and politely "accepted" their invitation to visit Russia some- time. Upon parting, Litvinov gave them one of the numerous fake business cards he carried. Most important, as Litvinov recalled, the imperial officers had given him valu- able information concerning the latest European firearms and ammunition.39

Amazingly enough at this same time, one of the Russian government's leading agents in Europe, a certain Garting, had informed St. Petersburg that, "Vallakh . . . has been in Berlin . . . to make arms purchases in large quantities and to arrange their delivery to Russia."40 Moreover, the capital's authorities notified its agents abroad in June 1906 that Litvinov was "in Marseilles to arrange the transport of arms via the Black Sea." Despite this information Litvinov continued to elude imperial agents active in Europe.

Litvinov's attention turned next to the problem of transportation. He toured almost all the major European ports, receiving accommodations and advice along the way

37. Pope, Litvinov, 74-75. 38. Z. S. Sheinis, "Vodvoritel' oruzhiia," Nauka i zhizn' 7 (1966): 19. 39. Ibid., 20. Sheinis writes that his account is based on "what Litvinov later remembered," but he

gives no sources. 40. Ibid., 21.



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from friends in other socialist parties. He eventually decided on Varna, Bulgaria, as the best spot from which to dispatch arms and ammunition into the empire. Litvinov then went directly to Bulgarian government officials to enlist their help in getting the cargo to "Armenians, who are fighting the Turkish oppressor." Initially enthusiastic, the Bulgarians wavered, and Litvinov, with breathtaking recklessness, decided to present his case at once to the Bulgarian war minister, General Savov. The precise contents of this bizarre conversation are not known, but Litvinov claimed that Savov promised that the Bulgarian authorities would not interfere with a project aimed at the Turks.4'

Litvinov quickly bought a yacht in Fiume and refitted it for his task, but political squabbling across the Continent hampered his plans. In April 1906 the Fourth Con- gress of the Russian Social Democrats met in Stockholm in an. attempt to reunify the party. Lenin called for a "new revolutionary onslaught against absolutism," which the Menshevik majority promptly rejected. When Litvinov heard of this, he submitted his resignation from the party's Central Committee, but the Mensheviks rejected that also. Litvinov recalled that this action had amazed him. He could only surmise that the more radical party elements from the Caucasus, for whom the weapons were intended, had pressured the Central Committee to continue the operation. The money needed to complete the mission, however, was never sent. Litvinov decided that he must go to St. Petersburg to make a personal plea. From Paris an imperial agent informed the capital that Litvinov was returning under the alias "Gustav." The police decided to let the fugitive make his way to St. Petersburg where, it was hoped, he would reveal his ac- complices. The plans had to be changed, however, because in Vilnius the police as- signed to watch Litvinov lost track of him.42 In panic, they issued orders that Litvinov was to be arrested "at all costs." He was soon picked up in Vilnius and taken, under police guard, to St. Petersburg. Upon arriving in the capital, Litvinov escaped, although the details of the escape are not known. He spent a few days in the city (while, on the assumption that he had fled, the police ordered searches in all the other western cities of the empire) and obtained funds from some unnamed Mensheviks. Then he made his way back to Bulgaria.43

Finally, in late 1906, after ten months of preparation, Litvinov stood on the beach near Varna and watched as the yacht sailed away, bound for the port of Batum. His high hopes were dashed when he learned three days later that the boat had run aground, the crew had scattered, and Rumanian fishermen had helped themselves to the cargo.'

Thus concluded Litvinov's most important prerevolutionary work. He continued to be active within the party and in August 1907, became the secretary of the Russian Social Democrats' delegation to the Twelfth Congress of the Second International-a fact that indicates he still maintained relations with the Menshevik majority, despite his personal devotion to Lenin. In November 1907 the Russian director of police offered "any price" for Litvinov's capture. He was arrested in January 1908 in Paris by the French police when he tried to exchange some bank notes stolen by a Bolshevik "ex- propriation" squad in Tbilisi in June 1907. Litvinov, however, was able to prove that he had been in Paris at the time of the robbery, so the French minister of justice refused the extradition request of the Russian authorities but he did have Litvinov escorted out

41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 22. Sheinis writes only that Litvinov "vanished into the air." 43. Ibid., 23-24. 44. B. Bibineishvili, Kamo (Moscow: Staryi Bolshevik, 1934), 112. 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.




of the country as an undesirable. Later, Litvinov and the minister were to meet under decidedly different circumstances. The minister was Aristide Briand.4s

Disheartened and weary from almost eight years of continuous and seemingly useless revolutionary struggle, the thirty-two year old Litvinov arrived in London in January 1908. He had with him a letter of introduction from the well-known writer and Bolshevik sympathizer, Maksim Gor'kii. Using this, he met the director of the London Library, Charles Wright. Wright, in turn, got Litvinov a job with the publishing house of Williams and Norgate, where, characteristically, Litvinov quickly rose to a position of some responsibility-it seems that he was even called into conferences to give his opinion of the firm's general policy.46

For the most part, Litvinov's behavior was quite conventional. He worked hard, rented a small room in a Hampstead boarding house, took an English lady as his wife, and indulged his love of travel by frequent excursions to the countryside.47

At the same time, Litvinov's contacts with Lenin became increasingly infrequent. Litvinov represented the Bolsheviks at a 1914 meeting in London of the International Socialist Bureau, which had been convened to discuss the Bolshevik-Menshevik schism. The bureau supported the plan for the ill-fated Brussels Unity Conference of July 1914. Litvinov subsequently wrote to Lenin that none of Europe's socialists seemed to care one way or the other about the differences between the Russian groups. Litvinov himself was losing interest in the matter. He denied Lenin's request that he represent the Bolsheviks at the Brussels conference, claiming that he could not be away from his job that long.48

Litvinov had a mind of his own, as he had shown in late 1904 when he made specific proposals to Lenin. At that time, however, the young revolutionary would not have turned down his mentor's request to attend a socialist conference. But Litvinov had changed a great deal from 1908 to 1914. He was now very much settled in London, and, according to his daughter, had even come to admire the British parliamentary system. In the last symbolic act that cut many of his ties with his revolutionary past, Lit- vinov became a British subject.49 It seems likely that by 1914 Litvinov had come to the conclusion that the revolutionary dreams of his youth were to go unfulfilled.

Dreams die hard, and Litvinov's earlier socialist vision for his native land continued to live. Therefore, Litvinov was able to serve the Soviet government for many years even if he disagreed with specific policies. He must have believed that with time the system would stop its most repressive practices, and Russia could become a land

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. Z. S. Sheinis, "Londonskie gody M. M. Litvinova," Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 4 (1986): 120.

48. R. C. Elwood, "Lenin and the Brussels 'Unity' Conference of July 1914, " The Ruissian Review 39 (1980): 33-39; Sheinis, "Londonskie gody," 115. Significantly Litvinov only told his wife, Ivy, who was vaguely socialist in her politics, that he knew Lenin after 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." John Carswell, The Exile (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983), 68. Carswell had exclusive access to Ivy Litvinov's personal papers and knew her for many years. Pope, Litvinoff, 96.



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"without prisons." But the dream eventually died. In an interview with Richard C. Hottelet in 1947 Litvinov bluntly compared Stalin and Hitler in their expansionist foreign policies.50 In his last months the former commissar told his wife that, "After all, perhaps Tolstoi was right-you don't accomplish anything by force.""5 He had made the long ideological journey from a gun-running revolutionary to a man who doubted the usefulness of violence in any situation. It had taken the terrible nightmare of Sta- linism to destroy a young man's dreams.

50. New York World Telegram and Sun, 29 January 1953, 17. 51. Interview with Tatiana Litvinov.



from a bolshevik to a british subject: the early years of maksim m. litvinov

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