Brest-Litovsk peace delegation chair and Trotsky's longest-standing comrade
"You were always right and you always yielded" — his final bedside letter to Trotsky. Trotsky's graveside eulogy was his last public speech in the USSR.
Trotsky's longest-standing comrade and a Bolshevik diplomat. As chair of the MRC he directed the October rising; his Brest-Litovsk peace delegation and the Sun-Joffe Declaration opened the path of revolutionary diplomacy.
Career Timeline
- 1903–1907Began revolutionary work as a Menshevik; studied medicine in Berlin and law in Zurich
- 1908–1912Published Vienna Pravda with Trotsky; studied psychoanalysis under Alfred Adler
- 1912–17Exile: Balkan War correspondent; anti-war internationalist during WWI
- 1917.5Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy
- 1917.8VI Congress: joins Bolsheviks with Mezhraiontsy; candidate CC member and secretary
- 1917.10Chaired the Petrograd MRC during the October rising
- 1917.11–1918.1Chaired the Soviet delegation at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks
- 1918.4–11RSFSR plenipotentiary to Germany; signed the Supplementary Treaty, expelled for supporting revolution
- 1922–1923Soviet representative to China; the Sun-Joffe Declaration opened the path to KMT-CCP cooperation
- 1924–1925USSR plenipotentiary to Austria
- 1925–1927Deputy chair of the Concession Committee under Trotsky; active in the Left Opposition
Related historical events
The Sun–Joffe Declaration: A Landmark of Revolutionary Diplomacy
In the summer of 1922, Joffe arrived in Beijing as the Soviet government's plenipotentiary. China was fragmented by warlord rule and the treaty-port concessions of the imperialist powers; Sun Yat-sen, having been driven out of Guangdong after establishing his third government there, was staying in Shanghai. Joffe's mission was to break through the imperialist encirclement by building ties with Chinese revolutionary forces.
From August 1922 through January 1923, Joffe exchanged multiple letters with Sun and held face-to-face meetings in Shanghai. Negotiating even from his sickbed, Joffe finally issued a joint declaration with Sun on 26 January 1923. The declaration's core provisions were an explicit acknowledgement that the Soviet-style communist system was unsuitable for China's conditions, and a Soviet pledge of support for the Kuomintang's struggle to unify and liberate China. The questions of Outer Mongolia and the Chinese Eastern Railway were deferred.
The Sun–Joffe Declaration became the foundation of KMT–CCP cooperation, the First United Front. In summer 1923, Sun sent Chiang Kai-shek to Moscow to study Soviet military and political institutions, while Joffe, recovering in Japan, wrote to Sun proposing the concrete formula of Communist Party members joining the KMT individually to advance the Chinese revolution. Joffe's proposal was implemented with support from Mikhail Borodin and Vladimir Lenin, and laid the institutional groundwork for the National Revolution, from the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy to the Northern Expedition.
The Sun–Joffe Declaration was more than a diplomatic document: it was a demonstration of the methodological model of Soviet diplomacy in 20th-century anti-colonial revolutionary movements. Through it, Joffe embodied a strategy that eroded the imperialist order not through abstract slogans of world revolution but through pragmatic cooperation with concrete political forces.