Archibald Clark Kerr

United Kingdom state institutions 1882–1951 ○ Died

British ambassador in Moscow from 1942 to 1946 who forged a close relationship with Stalin and attended Yalta and Potsdam

An Australian-born Scot, he joined the Foreign Service in 1906, was minister in Latin America, Sweden and Iraq and ambassador to China from 1938 to 1942. As ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1942 to 1946 he forged a remarkable relationship with Stalin and facilitated the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. A 1944 memorandum forecast that the Soviets would use foreign communist parties to serve "Russia as a state as distinct from Russia as a revolutionary notion". He signed the protocol to the Bulgarian armistice for Britain in 1944 and after Yalta sat with Molotov and Harriman on the commission on reorganising the Polish government. Created Baron Inverchapel in 1946, he was ambassador in Washington until 1948, where the defection of Maclean and Burgess cast a shadow over his career. He was politically on the left.

Also known as: Sir Archibald Clark Kerr · Lord Inverchapel · Baron Inverchapel · Archibald John Kerr Clark Kerr