Ivan Maisky

Life and career

Ivan Maisky was born Jan Lachowiecki in Kirillov to a Russified Polish family living in Imperial Russia. His early revolutionary activities led to his expulsion from St. Petersburg University in 1902. After internal exile in Siberia, he travelled in Western Europe, where he learned English and French. In 1912, he settled in London until 1917. There, he met and befriended Georgii Chicherin and Maxim Litvinov. As his English improved his circle of friends expanded to include George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Beatrice Webb.

At the outbreak of the Russian Civil War and the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia, Maisky returned to Russia and settled in Samara, where he joined the local Komuch government, for which he was banished by the Mensheviks.

In 1921, he officially joined the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) which started his career within the communist system of power in Russia. In 1922 he started working as a diplomat at various posts including London, Tokyo and Helsinki, but in 1924, he also served as the first editor of the Petrograd literary magazine Zvezda.

In 1929, he became the Soviet ambassador to Finland. A close collaborator of Maxim Litvinov, Maisky was an active member and the Soviet envoy to the Committee of Non-Intervention during the Spanish Civil War.

In 1932 he returned to London as the official Soviet envoy to the United Kingdom, a post he held until 1943. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Maisky dealt with a number of crises including intense British hostility towards the Soviets as a result of the Winter War with Finland.

In 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Maisky was responsible for the normalisation of relations with the Western Allies. Among other pacts, he signed the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement of 1941, which declared the Nazi-Soviet Pact null and void. It also normalised relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile and allowed for hundreds of thousands of Poles to be released from the Soviet Gulag.

During these years in London, he reassured Joseph Stalin that Britain had no interest in signing a separate peace with Germany while pressuring Britain to open a "second front" against the Germans in Northern France. He maintained close contact with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden and personally visited the Foreign Office every day to get the latest news.

In 1943, he was recalled to Moscow, where he became the Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and led a number of commissions planning possible Soviet strategies for ending the war and for the immediate post-war world. Maisky's commission focused particularly on the dismemberment of Germany, heavy reparations (including forced labor), severe punishment of war criminals, and long-term Soviet occupation. He also recommended maintaining a "viable Poland," albeit with significantly modified borders. In terms of post-war planning, Maisky envisioned a Europe with "one strong land power, the USSR, and only one strong sea power, Britain." His concerns about American ideological hostility led him to see Britain as a more viable long-term partner because he believed they would be more conservative going into the post-war world. He anticipated a struggle between the two, which would push Britain closer to the Soviet Union. Consequently, he joined Soviet delegations to the conferences in Yalta and Potsdam.

In 1945, he retired from active service in Soviet diplomacy and devoted himself to history. From 1946 onwards he was a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1953, shortly before Stalin's death, he was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for alleged espionage. In 1955, however, he was released, cleared of all charges and fully rehabilitated. In 1966 Maisky signed the so-called "Letter of 25" Soviet writers, scientists and cultural figures, addressed to Leonid Brezhnev and expressing opposition to a possible rehabilitation of Stalin.