Mission to America: Maksim M. Litvinov in the United States, 1941?43

Abstract

On 7 December 1941, Maksim M. Litvinov arrived in the United States to begin his turbulent and frustrating tenure as the Soviet ambassador. The ambassadorship marked the climax of a diplomatic career that began in 1918, when Litvinov was the Bolshevik representative in Great Britain. Subsequently he had been deputy commissar for foreign affairs in the 1920s and commissar for foreign affairs from 1930 to 1939. As commissar, he had been a leading advocate of collective security as a defense against the expansionism of Nazi Germany. He also had been the chief Soviet negotiator in the talks that led to diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States in 1933. He was, in short, a well-known figure on the international scene. As ambassador to the United States, Litvinov had relatively little influence on the formulation of Soviet policy, but he was nonetheless a highly important intermediary between Washington and Moscow. Although his dispatches by no means tell the whole story of the early wartime coalition, they do shed light on some major issues, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's views on Soviet participation in the Pacific war; the opening of a second front (a pivotal concern for Moscow); and Roosevelt's basic assumption about the roles of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain in the postwar world. Moreover, Litvinov's views on Soviet-American cooperation have an intrinsic interest for historians because he was the foremost advocate of good relations between Moscow and the West. It is highly significant that, although he felt very bitter toward America during much of his tenure as ambassador, Litvinov left Washington convinced that there would be no genuine obstacle to Soviet-American cooperation after the victory of the Grand Coalition.