Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union)

People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (Russian: Народный Коммиссариат Иностранных Дел: Narodnyi Komissariat Inostrannykh Del) was a ministry in the Soviet Union. The Commissar was a member of the Council of the People's Commissars. It replaced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the previous regime after the Bolsheviks under Lenin's leadership had seized power in the October Revolution. The Commissariat was founded in 1917 and existed until 1946 when the commissariats were all renamed back into ministries.

Originally the Bolsheviks had expected the revolution to spread from Russia to the rest of the world, shaken by the First World War. As these expectations proved unfounded, the Bolsheviks had to engage in diplomatic relations with a hostile world to ensure the survival of the Soviet state. The Soviet diplomats operated under difficult circumstances. The rhetoric of the Bolsheviks was extremely hostile to the capitalist countries. During the first years after the revolution there was a pronounced tendency to take advantage of diplomatic immunity to conduct espionage and to support communist activists in other countries. Only in the early 1920s the need to keep the diplomatic service untainted was given higher priority.

The first Commissar of Foreign Affairs was Leon Trotsky. Upon his appointment he stated that his primary task would be to publish all secret protocols and treaties signed by the previous Russian governments. In early 1918 Trotsky was succeeded on the post as commissar by Georgy Vasilievich Chicherin. He remained in office until 1930, when his deputy Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was appointed new commissar.

Even if the Commissariat was supposed to be something completely different from the bourgeois Ministry, the practical demands for language skills and knowledge of foreign countries prevented a clean break with the past. Initially, the commissariat kept on a large number of diplomats from before the revolution. And it continued to operate along the same lines as had the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs with various departments surveying the developments in particular areas.

Until 1934 the commissariat was nominally led by a board (коллегия) where the Commissar as well as all deputies were represented. As Stalin consolidated his grip on power, the independence of the Narkomindel and its board was gradually curbed.

Contact with foreigners in general and foreign postings in particular was seen as something that made special demands on the political reliability. Therefore, as suitable candidates were recruited and trained they little by little replaced the old diplomats of the tsarist era. By 1926 Narkomindel topped the list of nomenklatura positions - out of a total of 923 in the central administration 205 were employed in Narmkomindel. And the majority of the senior officials were party members.

Even if the diplomats were chosen with great care and deliberation, the Soviet diplomatic corps was particularly badly hit during the Great Terror 1936-1939. As the Soviet diplomats were naturally in contact with the outside world and therefore could have been subject to recruitment attempts from foreign intelligence services, they were eyed with strong suspicion as the hunt for spies intensified. The purges were only excarcerbated by the ongoing constitutional rivalry, especially that between Narkomindel and the OGPU/NKVD. In 1939 Molotov replaced Litvinov as commissar. This represented both a break with the Popular Front policy and with the institution Litvinov had created. By 1941 only 25 % of the senior officials in Narkomindel had been appointed before 1939, and a mere 15 % earlier than 1936.

People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs	Period in office
Leon Trotsky	26 October (8 November) 1917 — 8 April 1918
Georgy Chicherin	30 March 1918 — 1930
Maxim Litvinov	1930—1939
Vyacheslav Molotov	1939—1946

References

• Annuaire diplomatique du Commissariat de peuple pour les affaires etrangeres/Ежегодник Наркоминдела, Наркоминдел Moscow 1929, 1933, 1934, 1935.
• O.V. Chlevnjuk 1937-ой: Сталин и советское общество, Республика Moscow 1992.
• Viktor Knoll & Lothar Kölm Das Narkomindel im Urteil der Partei. Ein Kaderanalyse aus dem Jahre 1930, pp. 267-314 in Michael G. Müller Berliner Jahrbuch für osteuropäische Geschichte, Akademie Verlag Berlin 1995.
• T.P. Korzhichina & Ju.Ju. Figatner Советская номенклатура: становление, механизмы, действия, pp. 25-38, Вопросы истории 1993:7.
• Teddy J. Uldricks Diplomacy and Ideology - The Origin of Soviet Foreign Relations 1917-1930 Sage Publications London 1979.