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Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky (also transliterated as "Maysky"; Russian: Ива́н Миха́йлович Ма́йский) (19 January 1884 – 3 September 1975), a Soviet diplomat, historian and politician, served as the Soviet Union's ambassador to the United Kingdom[1][2] from 1932 to 1943, including much of the period of the Second World War.

Early career

Ivan Maisky was born Jan Lachowiecki in a nobleman's castle in Kirillov, near Nizhny Novgorod, where his father was working as a private tutor.[3] His father was a Polish Jew who was a convert to Orthodox Christianity and his mother was Russian.[4] He spent his childhood in Omsk, where his father worked as a military doctor. As a student at St. Petersburg University, he was profoundly influenced by the writings of Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In 1902, he was arrested for his political activities, and sent back to Omsk under police surveillance. In 1903 Maisky joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In January 1906 he was arrested for his part in the 1905 revolution and deported to Tobolsk. His sentence was later commuted and he was allowed to emigrate to Munich, where he obtained a degree in economics.

In November 1912, Maisky moved to London and shared a house in Golders Green with Maxim Litvinov and Georgy Chicherin. As his English improved his circle of friends expanded to include George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Beatrice Webb. After the outbreak of war in 1914, he supported the Menshevik Internationalists, who were opposed to the war in a passive manner, acting as their main representative at a socialist conference in London in February 1915. This caused friction in his relationship with Litvinov, a Bolshevik, who supported Lenin's line policy of 'revolutionary defeatism', namely that the Bolsheviks should work actively for Russia's defeat as the best way of bringing about a revolution.

Maisky returned to Russia after the February Revolution, and served as deputy minister for labour in the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky. He opposed the Bolshevik Revolution, and as the Russian Civil War began, he moved to Samara, and in July 1918, became minister for labour in the rump of the provisional government, known as the Komuch, who backed armed resistance to the Bolsheviks, for which he was expelled from the Menshevik party. He had to flee to Mongolia when Admiral Kolchak imposed a military dictatorship in Siberia in 1919. In Mongolia, he wrote a letter to Anatoly Lunacharsky praising the "boldness and originality" of the Bolsheviks, as compared with the "virtuous but talentless" Mensheviks, and on Lunacharsky's recommendation was allowed to join the Bolshevik party, and posted to Omsk as head of the Siberian section of Gosplan.[5]

In January 1922, Maisky moved to Moscow as head of the press department of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel), now headed by Chicherin and Litvinov, where he met Agnia Skripina, his third wife, but was later posted to Leningrad, where, in January 1924, he was appointed chief editor of the literary journal Zvezda. Under his editorship, the magazine was the only major publication in the Soviet Union not controlled by the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) to encourage 'proletarian' literature, and have a representative of their movement on its board, while tolerating a range of critical opinion. Maisky personally tried to adopt a middle position between RAPP and their main opponent, Alexander Voronsky.[6]

Diplomatic career

In 1925, Maisky was appointed counsellor at the Soviet embassy in London, where he served during the turbulence of the Zinoviev letter, and the General Strike, acting up as de facto ambassador with the sudden death of the ambassador, Leonid Krasin, until he was forced to leave when Britain severed diplomatic relations with the USSR in May 1927. He was counsellor at the Soviet embassy in Tokyo in 1927–29. In April 1929, he became the Soviet Envoy to Finland.

In October 1932 he returned to London as the official Soviet ambassador to the Court of St James, as the post was and is titled. He held it until 1943.[8] The First Five Year Plan had been launched in 1928 intended to make the Soviet Union industrially and hence militarily self-sufficient, and as such Maisky's duties in London were at first primarily economic.[9] The British cabinet minister whom Maisky negotiated the most was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, who told Maisky was the "most unfriendly country in the world" and he was not incliced to grant British trade credits to permit the exports of British machinery to assist with the First Five Year Plan.[9] Chamberlain came to detest Maisky, whom he saw as sly trickster who never said what he meant and never meant what he said.[9] In a letter to his sister Ida on 19 November 1932, Chamberlain condemned Maisky as difficult and dishonest, feelings that he was to retain when became prime minister in 1937.[9]

Starting in 1934 when the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, the proclaimed policy of the Soviet government was support for collective security under the banner of the League of Nations against aggression.[10] The major foreign policy-related fear of Moscow was of facing a two-front war with Germany attacking in Europe and Japan attacking in Asia. Maxim Litvinov, the Foreign Commissar from 1930 to 1939 favored a policy of creating a bloc of states meant to deter aggression in both Europe and Asia, and felt the League's policy of collective security was the ideal means for forming such a bloc.[11] The policy of supporting collective security under the League was in effect was a roundabout way of supporting the international system established after World War In Europe and Asia (which the Soviets had opposed until then) without actually saying so. Maisky's task in London was to enlist British support for this policy. Maisky argued to the Foreign Office that both Japan and Germany were aggressive powers out to challenge the international order in Asia and Europe respectively, and that Britain should co-operate with the Soviet Union in upholding the international order against the "revisionist" powers.[12] The same policy of resistance to fascist aggression under the League's collective security principles tended to be embraced by British anti-appeasers such as Winston Churchill as a way of defending the international order created by the Treaty of Versailles. That treaty was widely viewed by British public opinion in the interwar period as too harsh towards Germany, and insofar as Nazi foreign policy was aimed at revising its terms, British public opinion was broadly supportive of such efforts until March 1939.[13]

While ambassador, Maisky addressed as many British audiences as possible in order to break through the air of hostility towards the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1930s, a task which Litvinov “encouraged Maisky to undertake in every way possible.”[14] Robert Vansittart, a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, arranged a dinner at his home at which Maisky first met Winston Churchill. Later, after a state banquet in honour of King Leopold of Belgium, in the presence of King George VI and of Joachim von Ribbentrop, Churchill made a point of being seen to have a long conversation with Maisky.[15] Maisky took to cultivating the Canadian-born Media mogul Lord Beaverbrook.[16] Lord Beaverbrook was the owner of a chain of newspapers that took a populist right-wing line, the most successful of which was The Daily Express. Reflecting his Canadian origins, Beaverbrook believed in strengthening Britain's ties with the Commonwealth. He favored an isolationist line with regard to Europe, and therefore tended to support appeasement. However, Beaverbrook stated in a letter to Maisky in 1936 that he had a “friendly attitude” towards Stalin, and promised Maisky that "nothing shall be done or said by any newspaper controlled by me which is likely to disturb your tenure of office".[16]

A close collaborator of Maxim Litvinov, Maisky was an active member and the Soviet envoy to the Committee of Non-Intervention during the Spanish Civil War. The Non-Intervention Committee, which met in London, was mostly made up of the various ambassadors in London. Both Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador in London, and Dino Grandi, the Italian ambassador in London, did their best to sabotage the Non-Intervention Committee as both Germany and Italy had intervened in the Spanish Civil War by sending forces to fight alongside the Spanish Nationalists against the Spanish Republic.[17] At the first meeting of the Non-Intervention Committee on 9 September 1936, Maisky justified the Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War under the grounds that Germany and Italy had intervened in the war first.[17] Maisky in his speech before the Committee stated that the Soviet Union would only observe the principles of the Non-Intervention Committee as much as the other powers represented in the Non-Intervention Committee did.[17] Ribbentrop often visited Germany and during his absence from London, the chief German delegate on the Committee was Prince Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck.[17] The Non-Intervention Committee became a farce and a political theater as Maisky traded insults with Grandi, Ribbentrop and Bismarck for the benefit of the journalists present over which power was intervening the most in Spain.[17]

Maisky's position became increasingly difficult as the British government committed itself to a policy of appeasement, and he was unable to get clear instructions about Soviet policy. Maisky was close to a number of anti-appeasement MPs such as Churchill and the National Labour MP Harold Nicolson.[18] Maisky was a leading figure in a loose collection of public figures who opposed appeasement, which included not only Churchill, Nicolson and his wife Lady Vita Sackville-West, but also Bob Boothby; Brendan Bracken and the Czechoslovak minister-plenipotentiary Jan Masaryk.[19] A favourite meeting place for them was the Soviet embassy, which Churchill's son Randolph Churchill called "a grim Victorian mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens", but Maisky was a popular host who was generous in filling the glasses of his guests with white wine, red wine, sherry, vodka, and Curaçao.[19] Despite the nature of the parties hosted by Maisky, he himself would only drink water.[19]

On 6 August 1938, Maisky reported to Moscow that he had met Masaryk, who lashed out at the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, charging that the British were applying strong pressure on Czechoslovakia "to make the maximum number of concessions to the Sudeten Germans".[20] Masaryk complained to Maisky that Halifax was not being "even-handed" as he constantly pressured the Czechoslovak government to make more and more concessions to Konrad Henlein while not applying pressure to Henlein to make any concessions.[20] On 8 August 1938, Maisky met with Lancelot Oliphant, the assistant permanent undersecretary for foreign affairs, where the Soviet ambassador stated that "all the actions of British diplomacy in Czechoslovakia were directed not at bridling aggression, but rather bridling the victims of aggression".[20] Oliphant responded by stating that his government was committed to being "even-handed" in finding a solution that would be equally acceptable to both sides, through he admitted that many people shared Maisky's views of his government's policy.[20] A week later, Maisky met with Lord Halifax, when he attacked Halifax for his government's "weak and shortsighted" policy as he accused the British on putting all the pressure for concessions on President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia and none on Adolf Hitler.[20] Much to Maisky's surprise, Halifax did not seek to defend his government's policy, instead falling silent.[20]

After meeting Maisky earlier that day, Nicolson wrote in his diary on 26 August 1938: "if Maisky can be induced to promise Russian support if we take a strong line on Czechoslovakia, the weak will of the Prime Minister may be strengthened".[21] During the Sudetenland crisis, Maisky together with Masaryk were in close contact with Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, which was the Official Opposition to the Conservative-dominated National Government.[22] Much of the information which Attlee used in his speeches in the House of Commons during the crisis was supplied by Maisky and Masaryk.[22] On 3 September 1938, Maisky met with Charles Corbin, the French ambassador in London.[23] Corbin complained at length to Maisky about the attitude of the Chamberlain government to the Sudetenland crisis, charging that the vague and evasive statements about what Britain might do if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia were making war more likely.[23] Corbin informed Maisky that the Deuxième Bureau had intelligence to the effect that Hitler was convinced that Britain would not intervene if the crisis should lead to war.[23] Corbin concluded by telling Maisky that France would declare war if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.[23] The next day, Maisky leaked to Churchill a private statement from Litvinov that the Soviet Union would honor its alliance with Czechoslovakia if France declared war..[23] In November 1938, Maisey told Charles Theodore Te Water, the South African high commissioner in London, about his "unutterable disgust with the Chamberlain policy" and stated his fears that the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 was a start of a four-power alliance of Britain, Italy, France and Germany meant to isolate the Soviet Union.[24]

After Litvinov was dismissed in May 1939, Maisky was almost the last exponent of a pact with Britain and France against Germany still in post, and was in effect prevented from speaking in public. Maisky stated: “Far from all the leading comrades' (including presumably Molotov) “realised the value of such speeches.”[25] Miasky was deeply involved in the talks for the proposed "peace front" of 1939 that was intended to deter Germany from invading Poland.[26] The slowness of the Chamberlain government in responding to the Soviet offers to have the Soviet Union take part in the "peace front" did much to undermine Maisky's standing in Moscow and gave the impression that Chamberlain was not serious about including the Soviet Union in the "peace front".[26] The Soviet offer of 18 April 1939 to have the Soviet Union join the "peace front" only received a British reply on 6 May 1939.[26] On 17 May 1939, Vansittart met with Maisky to offer Anglo-Soviet staff talks.[26] On 19 May 1939, Maisky met again with Vansittart to tell him that he received word from Molotov that Moscow would only accept a full military alliance with Britain and France, and the offer of staff talks was insufficient.[26] Maisky had drawn Chamberlain's ire at this time due to a report from MI5 that Maisky was in contact with anti-appeasement British journalists and leaking to them information to the effect that it was the British government which was stalling about forming an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance intended to deter Germany from invading Poland.[27]

World War Two

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Maisky dealt with a number of crises including intense British hostility towards the Soviets as a result of the Winter War with Finland.[28] A passionate Anglophile who enjoyed his posting in London, Maisky was reprimanded in April 1940 for having “gone too native” with the complaint being made that he liked the British too much.[16] Maisky must have been heartened when he visited one of his favorite restaurants in London at the time of the British withdrawal from Dunkirk. The proprietor's wife was in charge of the restaurant. When Maisky enquired about the whereabouts of the proprietor, she replied he was at Dunkirk, having gone in one of the small private boats which had sailed there in extremely dangerous conditions to assist the evacuation of troops, in response to a UK government appeal. Maisky was amazed when the proprietor's wife said that he had 'gone to save the boys from the Germans'. Maisky's reaction was 'It would not be easy to conquer such a people'.[29]

In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Maisky was responsible for the normalisation of relations with the Western Allies. Among other pacts, he signed the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement of 1941, which declared the Treaty of Non-Aggression Between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics null and void.[14] It also normalised relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile and allowed for hundreds of thousands of Poles to be released from Soviet prisoner of war camps.

In the summer of 1941, Maisky learned via a German Communist émigré living in London, Jürgen Kuczynski, that another German Communist émigré, Klaus Fuchs, was engaged in the British Tube Alloys atomic bomb project.[30] Kuczynski told Maisky that Fuchs would almost certainly spy for the Soviet Union if he was asked to do so, which led Maisky to decide to recruit him as a spy.[30] As Maisky greatly disliked the NKVD rezident at the London embassy, Ivan Chichayev, he decided to leave the recruitment to the GRU rezident Ivan Sklyarov, who in turn assigned the task to his secretary, Semyon Kremer.[30] In August 1941, when Kuczynski visited the embassy, he was met by Maisky who introduced him to Kremer and told him to ensure that Kremer met Fuchs in an inconspicuous place where neither the agents of MI5 or the Special Branch of Scotland Yard would be unlikely to notice the meeting.[30] Maisky later wrote: "I am quite clear that Fuchs never came to the embassy. We agreed via Dr. Kuczynski how and where to meet, and did so on a quiet street in west London at night. I took great care in preparing for the meeting and kept checking for surveillance on my way there".[30] On 8 August 1941, Kremer met with Fuchs, who agreed immediately to share the secrets of the Tube Alloys project with the GRU, saying that he felt it was a moral necessity for the Soviet Union to have an atomic bomb.[31]

On 16 October 1941, a new government was formed in Tokyo with the prime minister being General Hideki Tojo, a Japanese ultra-nationalist whose appointment was prime minister was taken at the time as presaging war, but against whom was an open question.[32] There were two schools of thought in the Japanese government, the "strike north" school of thought which favored having Japan invade the Soviet Union, a prospect made enticing by the fact that the Soviets were fully engaged against the German invasion, and the "strike south" school of thought, which favored taking advantage of the fact that the British were engaged against Germany to seize the British colonies in Asia. Tojo had long served in the Kwantung Army which occupied Manchuria and was known to be a Russophobe.[32] Maisky believed that Tojo belonged to the "strike north" school of thought.[32] As such, Maisky met with the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden on 17 October 1941, strongly urging the British government to issue a statement warning against a Japanese invasion of Siberia.[32] Maisky also urged Eden to continue with their build-up of forces in Asia meant to deter the Japanese from "striking south", arguing that the build-up of forces in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong together with the dispatch of a Royal Navy battle-squadron to Singapore were helpful to the Soviet Union as a means of deterring Japan.

During these years in London, he reassured Joseph Stalin that Britain had no interest in signing a separate peace with Germany.[28] Maisky was also pressuring Britain to open a second front against the Germans in Northern France.[28] He maintained close contact with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden and personally visited the Foreign Office every day to get the latest news.[33]

In July 1943, Maisky was recalled to Moscow 'for consultations'. That was, in fact, the end of his career as a diplomat. Maxim Litvinov was recalled to Moscow at the same time. Both men were awarded the rank of Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, but in Maisky's case particularly the title meant almost nothing. It is unclear why Stalin recalled them. Various theories are set out in J Holroyd-Doveton's biography of Maxim Litvinov.[34] The official reason, announced by Molotov, was that their recall was necessitated by the need for their advice in Moscow. There was a dearth in the Soviet government of men who would have the breadth of knowledge and experience which would qualify them to advise Stalin on his relations with the US and Britain.[35] Maisky believed they were recalled because of Churchill's letter of 5 May 1943 informing Stalin of the postponement of the Second Front until the spring of 1944.[36] Maisky's wife agreed, as she told Jock Balfour's wife that her husband was recalled because Maisky failed to obtain a Second Front.[37]

Maisky led a number of commissions planning possible Soviet strategies for ending the war and for the immediate post-war world. Maisky's commission focused particularly on the dismemberment of Germany, heavy reparations (including forced labor), severe punishment of war criminals, and long-term Soviet occupation. He also recommended maintaining a "viable Poland," albeit with significantly modified borders. In terms of post-war planning, Maisky envisioned a Europe with "one strong land power, the USSR, and only one strong sea power, Britain." His concerns about what he perceived as American ideological hostility led him to see Britain as a more viable long-term partner because he believed they would be more conservative going into the post-war world. He anticipated a struggle between the two, which would push Britain closer to the Soviet Union.[38]

Unlike Litvinov and Gromyko, who also participated in the commission, Maisky foresaw the greatest danger to the Soviet Union would be US technology plus Chinese human numbers spearheaded against the USSR. The possibility of a war between Communist China and the Soviet Union might have seemed an attractive proposition to the US and her allies.[39]

Maisky joined Soviet delegations to the conferences in Yalta and Potsdam.

Arrest and release

After the Potsdam conference, Maisky was relieved of responsibility for reparations, and not given another assignment until March 1946, when he was made part of a team drawing up a diplomatic dictionary. At his own request, he was admitted to the Soviet Academy of Sciences to concentrate on studying history. He was sacked from the foreign ministry in January 1947, and was arrested on 19 February 1953, during the anti-semitic purge that peaked with the announcement of the so-called Doctors' plot. In custody, fearing that he might be tortured, he 'confessed' to having been recruited as a spy while he was stationed in Tokyo, and had then been recruited by Winston Churchill to spy for the UK.

He was saved from the threat of execution by Stalin's death, in March, when Lavrentiy Beria seized back control of the Ministry of State Security (MGB) and renounced the Doctors' plot as a fabrication. But when Maisky was brought in front of MGB General Pytor Fedotov, who had been instructed to investigate Maisky's unlawful arrest, he feared a trap, refused to believe that Stalin was dead, and persisted with his story that he had been a spy. He did not back down until he had been put in a rest home, reunited with his wife, and shown film of Stalin's funeral.[40]

After a face to face meeting with Beria, Maisky was appointed Chairman of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries - seemingly as part of a manoeuvre by Beria to wrest control of foreign policy from Molotov, who had regained his former position as foreign minister, and whose antagonism to Maisky was well known. As a result, Maisky was rearrested after Beria's fall from office in June 1953. This time, he refused to confess, and at his trial, in June 1955, was sentenced to the comparatively light term of six years in exile. He was very soon granted clemency, and was released on 22 July 1955, when the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was due to meet Anthony Eden in Geneva.[41]

Later years

After his release, Maisky went back to work in the Academy of Sciences, and was allowed to publish four volumes of memoirs. In 1960 he was fully rehabilitated.[42] In 1966 Maisky signed the so-called "Letter of 25" Soviet writers, scientists and cultural figures, addressed to Leonid Brezhnev and expressing opposition to a possible rehabilitation of Stalin.[43]

However he remained loyal to Leonid Brezhnev and refused to have any sympathy with the dissidents of the late Soviet period. When, in 1968, Maxim Litvinov's grandson Pavel Litvinov with fellow students demonstrated against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Maisky telephoned Maxim Litvinov's daughter Tanya who confirmed that it was true. Maisky was so shocked that he refused to have any further contact with the Litvinovs.[44]

References

Further reading

Primary sources

• Maisky, Ivan. The Maisky Diaries: The Wartime Revelations of Stalin's Ambassador in London edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky, (Yale UP, 2016); highly revealing commentary 1934–43; excerpts; abridged from 3 volume Yale edition; online review
• 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, (3 vol, Yale University Press 2015).

Secondary sources

• Best, Anthony (1995). Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936-41. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415111713.
• Carley, Michael Jabara (1999). 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 9781461699385.
• Callaghan, John (2007). The Labour Party and Foreign Policy A History. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781134540167.
• Endicott, Stephen Lyon (1975). Diplomacy and Enterprise British China Policy, 1933-1937. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719006203.
• Graham Fry, Michael (1999). "Agents and Structures: The Dominions and the Czechoslovak Crisis, September 1938". In Igor Lukes; Erik Goldstein (eds.). The Munich Crisis, 1938 Prelude to World War II. London: Frank Cass. pp. 293–341. ISBN 0-7146-8056-7.
• Ireland, Josh (2021). Churchill & Son. London: Penguin. ISBN 9781524744472.
• Neilson, Keith (2005). Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139448864.
• Phillips, Hugh D (1992). Between The Revolution And The West A Political Biography Of Maxim M. Litvinov. Los Angeles: University of California. ISBN 9780813310381.
• Shaw, Louise Grace (2013). The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781135761264.
• Steiner, Zara (2011). The Triumph of the Dark European International History 1933-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199212002.
• West, Nigel (2004). Mortal Crimes The Greatest Theft in History : Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project. New York: Enigma Books. ISBN 9781929631292.

External links

• Who Helped Hitler?, book written by Maisky, published in English in 1964.
• Newspaper clippings about Ivan Maisky in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

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