Bolshevik historian who became Soviet Russia's first ambassador to Persia after thirty years of exile in Britain
Lenin wrote him in July 1920: "About your journey to Russia, I am in two minds. You are so very important for the work in London. Let them deport you: we shall see if they dare to do so."
A Bolshevik who spent thirty years in British exile. As the first Soviet ambassador to Persia (1921), he abolished Tsarist unequal treaties and later founded the Institute of World Economy and World Politics. A Marxist historian of the British labour movement and imperialism, he became a full member of the Academy of Sciences.
Career Timeline
- 1891Left the Russian Empire for political reasons, emigrated to Britain
- 1895–1911Joined the Social Democratic Federation; executive committee member 1901–1906
- 1901Joined RSDLP; aligned with the Bolshevik faction
- 1911–1920Led left wing of British Socialist Party, maintained anti-war position; contributed to The Call
- 1914–1918Worked as Russian translator and interpreter at the British Foreign Office and War Office
- 1920Helped found the Communist Party of Great Britain; returned to Soviet Russia
- 1921–1923Plenipotentiary Representative of RSFSR in Persia; concluded Soviet-Iranian treaty
- 1923–1930Member of NKID Collegium; executive editor of International Life
- 1924–1925Founding director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics
- 1927–1945Member of main editorial board, Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1st edition)
- 1939Elected full member (Academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1945–1946Awarded Order of Lenin (1945), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1946)
Thirty Years of British Exile and Left-Wing Socialist Organising
Rothstein left Tsarist Russia in 1891 and settled in Britain, where he soon became a central figure in the labour movement. He joined Henry Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1895 and was elected to its executive in 1900, serving until 1906. In 1901 he also joined the RSDLP, sided with the Bolsheviks, and developed a close relationship with Lenin, who frequently stayed at Rothstein's house on Clapton Square in Hackney during his London visits. During the First World War, while employed as a Russian translator at the Foreign Office and War Office, he led the left-wing anti-war opposition within the BSP against Hyndman's pro-war line and contributed extensively to the BSP organ The Call. After the war he played a decisive role in founding the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and helped Russian revolutionary émigrés, Litvinov, Maisky, Peters, establish themselves in London. In 1920, after visiting Moscow, he was refused re-entry to Britain and remained in Soviet Russia.
Marxist Historian and Academic Institution-Builder
Before he was a diplomat, Rothstein was a Marxist historian whose craft was honed over three decades of journalism and research. From his British exile years he published analyses of imperialism and international relations in the European social-democratic press, Justice, Die Neue Zeit, Prosveshchenie, and also wrote for leading British dailies (The Manchester Guardian, Tribune, The Daily News), establishing himself as an authority on world affairs. His early books The Decline of British Industry (1903) and Egypt's Ruin (1910) dissected British imperialism from a Marxist standpoint, while his labour-history study From Chartism to Labourism (1929) remains a cited classic.
Immediately after returning to Soviet Russia in late 1920, Rothstein chaired the 'Rothstein Commission,' proposed by Lenin, for the fundamental reform of social-science teaching in universities; its work led to the founding of the Institute of Red Professors in February 1921. In 1924 he became the first director of the Institute of World Economy and World Politics (IMKhMP) under the Communist Academy, laying the institutional foundation for the systematic Soviet study of capitalist economic cycles and crises. The Institute grew into a key brain trust for Soviet foreign policy, supplying closed analytical reports to Stalin, Molotov, Litvinov, and other top leaders, and continued under Rothstein's successor Evgeny Varga until its liquidation in 1947.
Rothstein served on the main editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (first edition) from 1927 to 1945, and from 1923 to 1930 was executive editor of Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn (International Life), the organ of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. The 'Library of International Politics' series he conceived and edited brought Western scholarly and diplomatic works into Russian translation, each volume prefaced by Rothstein's critical introduction, giving Soviet readers access to empirical material on imperialist-era international relations. In January 1939 he was elected a full member (Academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences: the highest scholarly recognition for a historian. His posthumously published International Relations at the End of the 19th Century (1960) represents the summation of his lifetime's research.
The 1921 Soviet-Iranian Treaty of Friendship
Rothstein's most significant diplomatic achievement was the preparation and signing of the RSFSR-Persian Treaty of Friendship, concluded in Moscow on 26 February 1921. As the first Soviet plenipotentiary to Persia (1921–1923), he secured the unconditional renunciation of every Tsarist concession extorted from Persia: the Accounting and Loan Bank, railway-building rights, Caspian Sea fisheries, and capitulations. The treaty, which abrogated all unequal agreements including the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, marked a watershed between the foreign policy of the imperialist powers and that of the Soviet state. It guaranteed both parties equal shipping rights in the Caspian and inserted Articles 5 and 6, allowing temporary Red Army entry onto Persian soil in case a third party used Persia as a base against the RSFSR, which remained a point of contention for decades. Even in December 1931, Rothstein personally addressed Persian concerns in a diplomatic note clarifying that those articles applied only 'in cases where preparations have been made for a considerable armed attack upon Russia' by partisans of the overthrown regime. The treaty stands as an early landmark of Soviet diplomacy toward the colonial and semi-colonial world.