Litvinov, Maksim

Litvinov, Maksim (Maksimovich)

 orig. Meir Walach

(born July 17, 1876, Bialystok, Pol.—died Dec. 31, 1951, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet diplomat and commissar of foreign affairs (1930–39). He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (1898), was arrested for revolutionary activity (1901), and fled to Britain. In 1917–18 he represented the Soviet government in London, then returned to Russia, where he joined the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and led Soviet delegations to disarmament conferences. As commissar for foreign affairs, he established diplomatic relations with the U.S. (1934), negotiated anti-German treaties with France and Czechoslovakia (1935), and urged the League of Nations to resist Germany (1934–38). He was dismissed before the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939). He served as ambassador to the U.S. (1941–43).