Soviet diplomat who shuttled between the Big Three wartime summits as Molotov's deputy
Asked about Gusev by Churchill, British ambassador Clark Kerr replied: 'He is a rude, inexperienced, and ill-mannered man.'
Fyodor Gusev was a Stalin-era diplomat who served as Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom (1943–1946) during World War II, attending all three Big Three conferences: Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam. A Leningrad law graduate who joined the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in 1935, he rose through the European desks before a posting as envoy to Canada (1942–1943) positioned him for the key wartime ambassadorship. The British side dismissed him as 'rude, inexperienced, and ill-mannered,' but Stalin and Molotov wanted tough enforcers, not the supplicant style of Litvinov and Maisky, for the negotiations that would shape the postwar order. After the war he served as Deputy Foreign Minister (1946–1952) during the opening phase of the Cold War, and ended his career as ambassador to Sweden (1956–1962).
Career Timeline
- 1935Joined the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
- 1938–1939Head of the Third Western Department, NKID
- 1941–1942Head of the Second European Department (UK & Dominions), NKID
- 1942–1943Envoy to Canada
- 1943–1946Ambassador to the United Kingdom
- 1946–1952Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
- 1956–1962Ambassador to Sweden
- 1975Retired