Soviet diplomat who co-drafted the UN Charter, the Soviet face at the UN through the early Cold War
Alger Hiss, Secretary-General of the San Francisco Conference, said of Sobolev and Pasvolsky: 'They were the draftsmen of the Charter… they were really responsible for the form the Charter took.'
A specialist in international law, Sobolev was the co-draftsman of the UN Charter at the 1945 San Francisco Conference, working alongside US delegate Leo Pasvolsky to produce the treaty's working text. After the war he served as UN Under-Secretary for Security and Political Affairs, helping institutionalize the new organization, then represented the Soviet Union as Permanent Representative to the UN from 1955 to 1960, defending the Soviet invasion of Hungary before the Security Council. He finished his career as Deputy Foreign Minister, directing the machinery of Soviet diplomacy until his death.
Career Timeline
- 1939–1942Secretary-General, People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
- 1942–1945Counsellor, Soviet Embassy in the UK
- 1945–1946Head of Political Dept, Soviet Military Administration in Germany
- 1946–1949UN Under-Secretary for Security and Political Affairs
- 1949–1950Head of UN Dept, Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- 1950–1951Head of USA Dept, Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- 1951–1953Soviet Ambassador to Poland
- 1953–1954Head of Americas Dept, Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- 1954–1955Deputy Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN
- 1955–1960Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN and Security Council
- 1960–1964Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
Related historical events
The Sobolev Action — The 1940 Bulgaria Mission
On November 24, 1940, Sobolev, then Secretary-General of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Sofia and presented a 12-point formal Soviet proposal to Tsar Boris III. The USSR offered support for Bulgaria's territorial claims in Western and Eastern Thrace, along with military and economic assistance; in return, it asked Bulgaria to assist the USSR should Soviet security in the Black Sea and Straits region be threatened, a formulation tied to the Soviet desire for a naval base at Burgas.
Prime Minister Bogdan Filov and Boris III, mindful of the recent Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, did not trust the offer and returned a polite but firm refusal within three days. That same day, Stalin summoned Georgi Dimitrov to the Kremlin and told him: "If the Bulgarians do not accept this proposal, they will fall entirely into the hands of the Germans and Italians." He ordered a mass campaign. Under Dimitrov's directive, the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists) launched a nationwide signature drive; within days more than 340,000 signatures poured into parliament and the palace. The poet Nikola Vaptsarov immortalized the campaign in his "Peasant Chronicle" and was arrested and exiled for it.
The campaign backfired. Its sheer scale alarmed the Bulgarian government, which accused Moscow of interfering in internal affairs. Stalin, judging the campaign too blatant, shifted the blame onto Dimitrov. On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria joined the Tripartite Pact, a Soviet diplomatic defeat. The Sobolev Action stands as a vivid episode of Soviet diplomacy under the Nazi-Soviet pact, one that left Moscow with an inflated estimate of communist strength inside Bulgaria, with fateful consequences after June 1941.