The Soviet chargé d'affaires in Berlin who opened the secret channel to the Nazi-Soviet pact
At the 26 July dinner with Schnurre he noted in his diary that he 'felt the conversation was beginning to go too far', even then holding no instructions at all from Moscow.
A Soviet diplomat who began as a writer of noble birth. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918, moved between press work and diplomacy, and in 1928 concluded the USSR's first treaty with an Arab state, Yemen. He is remembered above all for serving as chargé d'affaires in Berlin in the spring of 1939, when his meetings with Weizsäcker, Schnurre, and Ribbentrop carried the early signals of a German-Soviet rapprochement; after Molotov authorized him on 29 July to signal Soviet readiness, he was recalled to Moscow on the eve of the pact, then arrested in February 1940 and died in the camp.
Career Timeline
- 1918Joined the Bolshevik Party
- 1918–1920Telegraph agency correspondent in Berlin, editor of Kommunist in Vladikavkaz
- 1922–1928Press posts in the Soviet missions in Turkey, Germany, and Japan
- 1928Mission to Yemen; concluded the USSR's first treaty with an Arab state
- 1930–1935Counsellor in the missions in Turkey and Britain
- 1936–1937Head of the NKID press department
- 1937–1939Counsellor, then chargé d'affaires, of the USSR in Germany
- 1940Arrested and sentenced to 15 years; died in camp in 1942