Author of the 1919 Karakhan Manifesto that renounced Tsarist unequal treaties with China
Karakhan became doyen of the Beijing diplomatic corps in 1925. The Bolshevik who scorned bourgeois manners nonetheless rode in a gilded six-horse coach, clad in evening clothes and white kid gloves, to present his credentials. Time magazine called him: "A Bolshevik who can wear white gloves gracefully."
Born into an Armenian lawyer's family in Tiflis, he joined the RSDLP at 15 in 1904, initially as a Menshevik. Siding with the Bolsheviks in 1917, he served as secretary of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk and became Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In 1919 he drafted and issued the 'Karakhan Manifesto' renouncing all Tsarist unequal treaties and privileges in China, a foundational document of Soviet Asia policy. As ambassador to China he concluded the 1924 Sino-Soviet agreement, and later served as ambassador to Turkey. Arrested in the Great Purge of 1937 on charges of a 'pro-fascist conspiracy,' he was shot and posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.
Career Timeline
- 1904Joins RSDLP at 15, initially a Menshevik
- 1917.5Returns to Russia, joins the Mezhraiontsy
- 1917.8VI Congress: Mezhraiontsy merge into the Bolshevik Party
- 1917–1918Secretary, Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk peace talks
- 1918–1921Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (RSFSR)
- 1921–1922Plenipotentiary Representative of the RSFSR to Poland
- 1922–1923Head of the Eastern Department, NKID
- 1923–1926Plenipotentiary Representative, later Ambassador, to China
- 1925Doyen of the Beijing diplomatic corps
- 1926–1934Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (USSR)
- 1934–1937Plenipotentiary Representative of the USSR to Turkey
Related historical events
The Karakhan Manifesto (1919): Renouncing Tsarist Unequal Treaties
On 25 July 1919, as Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Karakhan issued an 'Appeal of the Council of People's Commissars to the Chinese People and the Governments of Southern and Northern China', the document that came to be known as the Karakhan Manifesto. In it, Soviet Russia unilaterally renounced all unequal treaties imposed by Tsarist Russia on China, offering to return Manchurian territories, surrender extraterritoriality, relinquish economic concessions, and give up Russia's share of the Boxer indemnity. This was the first diplomatic document from a European power to treat China as an equal sovereign nation, and it made a profound impression on Chinese intellectuals and nationalists including Sun Yat-sen. The favourable climate it created was one of the intellectual preconditions for the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
Yet a wide gap separated the text of the manifesto from its implementation. Within a month, the Soviet newspaper Izvestiia published a revised version that removed the promise to return the Chinese Eastern Railway, and by 1923 Moscow had begun denying that the original declaration ever existed. The Sino-Soviet agreement of 31 May 1924 reaffirmed the renunciation of extraterritoriality but provided for joint Sino-Soviet administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway and effectively preserved Soviet influence in Outer Mongolia. The Karakhan Manifesto thus stands as a historical document that sharply reveals the tension between anti-imperialist principle and the demands of realpolitik.