Talk:Maxim Litvinov

Old talk

Did he die of natural causes or was he helped along by Stalin?

Natural causes. Maybe you can find somebody who thinks otherwise, though. There's always somebody. Everyking 06:44, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

You're right. Naturally... ←Humus sapiens←ну? 08:28, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

When Stalin fired him in 1939, he acted in a manner clearly calculated to put fright in Litvinov, as he often did even when he had no intention of actually killing the person. In any case, he had to know any deal with Hitler had a short shelf life, and that he would need Litvinov again when he had to deal with the West. When Litvinov did die, it was as an old man in his bed. There's no evidence Stalin did anything to kill him. Jsc1973 (talk) 07:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It's more likely that he was fired because he was a jew and because there had to be a nonagression pact signed in a couple of month with Germany I doubt that Hitler would sign anything with the jew........ Vladbogodist (talk) 00:34, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Litvinov Assignment

Should information on the Litvinov Assignment be added within this page or on an external page?

It is mentioned within the Bricker Amendment page but not completely explained.

A remark: Bialystok never was part of Congress Poland, but of the so called North-West Territory (северо-западный край) within the Russian Empire. The Bialystok region belonged to the former regions of the Rzeczpospolita annexed by the car after the defeat of the Prussians in 1807 and the treaty of Tilsit (the Prussians got it after the last division of Poland in 1795). And it remained there after the Congress of Vienna. It was neither part of Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw, nor of Congress Poland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.176.205.36 (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

--Tenortoner1 04:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)tenortoner1

2nd photo

The photo of "Litvinoff," evidently scanned from a book, is too dark to be used. Sca (talk) 20:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

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In London with Joseph Stalin?

I am a casual passerby so I won't edit the article but something struck me as deeply wrong. The article says that a house was bought in London in which Litvinov lived with Josef Stalin. Really?? Stalin was never in London surely. 82.128.239.250 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes they were --in the same house in London in in May 1907. see Geoffrey Howse (1 January 2005). Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in London's East End. Casemate. p. 25. Rjensen (talk) 10:12, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad to stand corrected. Thx..82.128.239.250 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:51, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Tone

The tone of this article appears biased in favor of Litvinov, omitting as it does unsavory related material, such as the role of The New York Times' fraudulent reporting of Stalin's propaganda from Moscow during the 1930s and its significant positive influence on FDR's diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. The latter makes the Litvinov entry inconsistent in conveyance of accurate information with the Walter Duranty entry. IntheLongRunItIsBettertoTelltheTruth (talk) 20:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Length

Way to long for anyone who is not Jesus Christ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C64:667F:DB94:B045:DBE4:822E:D56E (talk) 01:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

in need of editing

(At least) the two paragraphs beginning "Litvinov stated that, although Roosevelt was less friendly to the USSR" are seriously in need of editing. 98.27.137.227 (talk) 23:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Removed text

CC-BY-SA; text in this section has been removed from the article by me because it's either off-topic, repeated, over-long and waffly. I'm leaving it here for he benefit of future editors, and in case its removal breaks any references. See the article's history for full attribution.

Talking to historian John Holroyd-Doveton, Tanya Litvinov recalled her father telling her that he had a meeting with Stalin set for the afternoon of 3 May. Tanya gleaned from her father's tone that he was concerned. Tanya similarly was so uneasy that she continually rang home on the day, but could not obtain an answer. When she arrived back at the Litvinov house, her father had already returned and gone to bed. In the morning, Litvinov's adopted daughter told Tanya, "father has been demoted". Tanya recounted that she went into her father’s bedroom, feeling terribly sympathetic. Maxim reported to have said to her in that moment, "Tanya, there is a new page in your life". Tanya then suggested they call her mother as they should all be together in this difficult time.

From "Ambassador to the United States and later "

I doubt we need so much minor detail from a single event, and some of this is POV waffle and OR:

As the 1941 campaign had shown the strength of the Red Army, the enthusiasm of the US Army was unbounded. The campaign in 1942 has shown an even more skilful and determined Red Army and the US Army is looking forward to the day when it can fight beside the Red Army and bear our full share of the common burden and go forward with it to victory.

Mayor La Guardia sent his personal greetings to his colleague, the Mayor of Stalingrad. The mayor sent what was then probably considered an optimistic but correct prediction that the only German soldiers who would enter Moscow would be an army of prisoners.

Litvinov, in his speech, asserted:

Every act of international aggression beginning with 1931 could have been prevented by sincere co-operation between the Soviet Union and the other great powers. No one can fail to recognise the fatal mistake made in so long ignoring the Soviet Union as a powerful factor of peace. This mistake was undoubtedly one of the causes of the present war which has brought upon humanity greater suffering and hardships and caused greater destruction than the sum of all the wars in the preceding century, not excluding the Napoleonic Wars. Sincere and close co-operation between the great powers and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, would have destroyed the raison d’être of Hitlerism and upset all the calculations of the aggressive countries. It was not hard to prove that such co-operation could have prevented each and every act of international aggression since 1931, crowned by the present war.

This was a somewhat hypocritical remark, as Litvinov himself had refused international co-operation when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Wallace, the Vice-President, gave a very optimistic address:

Both the Soviet Union and the United States retreated into isolationism to preserve their peace. Both failed. Both have learnt their lesson. I am here this afternoon to say it is my belief that the American and Soviet people can and will throw their influence on the side of building a new democracy which will be the hope of all the world.

However, there was no evidence that Stalin would continue to act other than as a ruthless dictator.

Litvinov stated that, although Roosevelt was less friendly to the USSR than when he met him in 1933: ‘Roosevelt is more friendly than any other prominent American.’ I wonder whether Litvinov appreciated the respect Roosevelt had for Litvinov because when, on 5 May 1943, Roosevelt decided to write to Stalin to suggest a face-to-face meeting between the two. Roosevelt stated that Litvinov ‘was one of only two persons with whom he had discussed the subject.

References

Cheers, Baffle☿gab 01:30, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Self-published source

The source Holroyd-Doveton, John (2013). Maxim Litvinov: A Biography. Woodland Publications. ISBN 978-0957296107., called over 30 times in the article, is self-published and so should not be relied upon to such a great extent. DuncanHill (talk) 11:56, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Just to the case, but much of Holroyd-Doveton is saying apparently (I have not read his book and only going by the claims made here) is wrong. For an example, this article says that Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, did not respond to Litvinov's offer of a tripartite alliance under British pressure. It is true that the French promised not to respond without consulting the British first, but that Bonnet "accidentally" accepted the offer in a meeting with Jakob Suritz, the Soviet ambassador in Paris. Anyone who is interested in confirming what I just wrote here should check pages 309-310 of the 1977 book France and the Coming of the Second World War by Anthony Adamthwaite.

It also seems a bit belittling the way the article names the British ambassador in as Sir William Seeds, but Emile Naggiar, the French ambassador is referred as "the French ambassador" as though he was so unimportant that his name is not worthy of being mentioned. Which reflects a broader problem, namely that people are projecting things onto the past. France in 1939 was considered to be a major world power and Litvinov was just as much concerned about relations with France as he was with Great Britain. People are projecting what happened in 1940 retroactively, which explains why so many articles treat France in the interwar period in a distorting manner as a declining power, which was certainly not the image that people had at the time. Case in point; the original version of Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the German plan for an invasion of France called for a German victory three years after the invasion was launched. When France declared war on Germany in 1939, it was unanimous opinion of the Wehrmacht generals that the earliest France would be defeated was in the summer of 1942. The Manstein variant on Fall Gelb, which called for a swift victory over France in the spring of 1940 was only adopted in February 1940, and even then it was only because a Luftwaffe officer had crashed into Belgium with a copy of the original version of Fall Gelb. Whatever else this may tell you about German military thinking, it does not suggest that France was considered to be this weak, declining power that is the popular image today. The way that alliance that Litvinov signed with France is given very short shift here in comparison with Litvinov's relations with the United States and the United Kingdom is a bit distorting.

Finally, this article uses a book from 1952 to argue that Litvinov was sacked as foreign commissar because he was a Jew and stood in the way of better relations with Germany. This is a very popular claim that is repeated a number of times around here, but the problem is all these books that saying this are not based on Soviet primary sources. Molotov was an extremely unpleasant man. He was an icy cold man with a strict manner who was famous for never smiling, hence the popular saying "Mr. Molotov never smiles". Molotov was a very hard, ruthless man, notorious for his arrogance, his rudeness, his "battering ram" style of riding roughshod over people, and a tendency to relentlessly hammer people (Molotov means hammer in Russian-he was very well named). It really seems unbelievable that anybody want to marry Molotov, but married he was. Madame Molotov was by all accounts an extremely obnoxious woman whom nobody liked, so maybe this was of like attracting like. But Madame Molotov also happened to be Jewish, which led her husband to write a letter that denounced her as an Israeli spy shortly before Stalin died (Molotov was a very hard, ruthless man so this behavior should come as no surprise). In Nazi terms, a Gentile married to a Jew was not really not that different from a Jew. In other words, all these claims that Litvinov was replaced with Molotov because he was a Gentile while Litvinov was a Jew are wrong. The records of the Narkomindel, which were first opened to historians in the glasnost era of the late 1980s does not support the theory given here. Litvinov had served as the Foreign Commissar since 1930, and Stalin seems to have sacked him in 1939 out of the perception that he had failed. Litvinov was supposed to negotiate an alliance with Britain and France under the banner of a collective security foreign policy starting in 1934 and had not been able to achieve that. Molotov had a reputation as a man who got things done, and he was Stalin's favorite trouble-shooter. That seems to be have the reason why Molotov was appointed the foreign commissar. More to the point, in the spring of 1939, 90% of the time the diplomats of the Narkomindel were trying to achieve an understanding with France and Britain and only 10% of the time seeking an understanding with Germany. The replacement of Litvnov with Molotov did not change Soviet foreign policy, so this an article is wrong to claiming otherwise. I will try to find books that reflect post-glasnost scholarship to correct this error. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:44, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

The belittling of the French ambassador was accidental. On 29 March, I clarified and added links for the CE's [who?] flags, including Seeds, but neither of us paid attention to unnamed persons. There are some further links that I have now added (Ilya Ehrenburg, Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev, Georgi Dimitrov) and also Gen. Lesley J. McNair (after inserting a comma to indicate that he hadn't been elevated to VP!). Douglian30 (talk) 12:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)