From TASS correspondent to youngest ambassador in Washington. The sharp, combative face of Stalin's wartime diplomacy
Roosevelt told his Cabinet: 'When the unpalatable Soviet ambassador, Konstantin Oumansky, proved stubborn, unaccommodating and unwilling to acknowledge that gold reserves could be used to cover payments, an angry and frustrated Roosevelt described him as "a dirty little liar."'
Konstantin Umansky was the Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1939 to 1941 and the youngest ambassador in Washington at the time. A former TASS correspondent who rose to head the Press and Information Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, he controlled censorship of all foreign dispatches from Moscow while multiple sources suggest his journalistic career also served as cover for NKVD intelligence work. His abrasive negotiating style over war materiel so infuriated Franklin Roosevelt that the president called him 'a dirty little liar' in a Cabinet meeting. Posted to Mexico in 1943, he mastered Spanish in three months and became the country's most popular diplomat, but died in an air crash en route to Costa Rica in 1945.
Career Timeline
- 1919Joined RCP(b); journalist for ROSTA in Berlin and Vienna
- 1922Staff member, People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, RSFSR
- 1922–1931TASS correspondent — bureau chief in Rome, Paris, and Geneva
- 1931–1936Deputy Head → Head, Press and Information Dept., NKID USSR
- 1936–1939Adviser → Chargé d'Affaires, Soviet Embassy, Washington
- 1939–1941Plenipotentiary → Ambassador Extraordinary to the United States
- 1941–1943Collegium member, NKID USSR
- 1943–1945Ambassador to Mexico; concurrently envoy to Costa Rica from 1944