Maxim Litvinov (17 July 1876-31 December 1951) was the Foreign Commissar of the Soviet Union from 21 July 1930 to 3 May 1939, succeeding Georgy Chicherin and preceding Vyacheslav Molotov.
Biography[]
Meir Henonch Wallach-Finkelstein was born in Bialystok, Congress Poland, Russian Empire in 1876 to a Jewish family, and he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party on its foundation in 1898. A firm supporter of Vladimir Lenin, he was soon imprisoned, but escaped in 1902 and then acted abroad as an arms agent for the 1905 Revolution. He returned to Russia but was deported and went to France and then London. After the October Revolution in 1917, he was appointed the first Bolshevik representative in London, from where he was deported in 1918. He then worked in the Soviet Foreign Office and from 1926 was virtually in control of Soviet foreign policy, although not appointed Foreign Commissar until 1930. He brought the USSR into the League of Nations and, through his rhetorical emphasis on disarmament and anti-fascism, played some part in portraying a more acceptable face of a country ravaged by the Great Purge. A strong advocate of collective security against the Axis Powers, he was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov before the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He was Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1941 to 1943, and he died in 1951.