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Second emigration

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Litvinov in 1902

When the Russian government began arresting the Bolsheviks in 1906, Maxim Litvinov left the country and spent the next ten years as an émigré and arms dealer for the party. He based himself in Paris and travelled throughout Europe. Posing as an officer in the Ecuadorian Army, he bought machine guns from the State Munitions Factory in Denmark, and posing as a Belgian businessman, he bought more weapons from Schroeder and Company of Germany. He then arranged for the whole consignment to be transported to Bulgaria, where he told the authorities the arms were destined for Macedonian and Armenian rebels fighting for independence in the Ottoman Empire. Litvinov then bought a yacht, and handed it and the weapons to the Armenian revolutionary Kamo to be smuggled across the Black Sea. The yacht, however, ran aground and the weapons were stolen by Romanian fishermen.[1] Despite this setback, Litvinov successfully smuggled these arms into Russia via Finland and the Black Sea.[2]

In 1907, Litivnov attended the fifth RSDLP congress in London. Initially, he relied on Rowton Houses for accommodation in London but the party eventually arranged a rented house for Litvinov, which he shared with Joseph Stalin, who also wanted to find more-comfortable housing than the Rowton hostels.[3][4]

In January 1908, French police arrested Litvinov under the name Meer Wallach while carrying twelve 500-ruble banknotes that had been stolen in a bank robbery in Tiflis the year before.[5] The Russian government demanded his extradition and the French Minister for Justice Aristide Briand ruled Litvinov's crime was political and ordered him to be deported.[6] He went to Belfast, Ireland, where he joined his sister Rifka and her family.[7] There, he taught foreign languages in the Jewish Jaffe Public Elementary School until 1910.[8]

Litvinov moved to England in 1910 and lived there for eight years. In 1912, he replaced Lenin as the Bolshevik representative on the International Socialist Bureau.[9] When the First World War broke out in 1914, the Russian government requested all Russian émigrés who were in allied England and eligible for military service return to serve in the Imperial Russian Army. Litvinov was able to convince the English officer who interviewed him that he would be tried rather than conscripted if he returned to Russia.[10]

In February 1915, Litvinov, uninvited, attended a conference of socialists from the Triple Entente that included Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and Emile Vandervelde; and the Mensheviks Yuri Martov and Ivan Maisky. Lenin prepared a statement demanding every socialist who held a government post should resign and opposing the continuation of the war. The conference chairman refused to allow Lenin to finish speaking. Litvinov regularly spoke in public opposing the war but failed to accept the fact the UK had declared war to avoid breaking a treaty to defend Belgium.[11] At the peak of his power in the 1930s, Litvinov would emphasise the importance of abiding by the terms of treaties.[12]

In England, Litvinov met and in 1916 married Ivy Low, the daughter of a Jewish university professor.[13]

  1. ^ Pope. Maxim Litvinoff. pp. 85–90.
  2. ^ Rappaport, pp. 136–137.
  3. ^ Geoffrey Howse (2005). Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in London's East End. Casemate. p. 25. ISBN 9781903425718.
  4. ^ Rappaport, p. 144.
  5. ^ "Alleged Nihilists Arrested in Paris," New York Times.
  6. ^ Wolfe, Bertram D. (1966). Three Who Made a Revolution. Harmondswoth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 444.
  7. ^ Jonathan Hamill, "The Red Under Our Bed," Old Belfast 9, 3 August 2011. https://issuu.com/glenravel/docs/oldbelfast9/24
  8. ^ "Belfast: 10 Little Known Facts from the Quirky to Downright Unbelievable," Belfast Telegraph.
  9. ^ Lenin, V.I. "To the Editors of Nashe Slovo". Lenin Internet Archive. Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
  10. ^ Holroyd-Doveto, p. 8
  11. ^ Holroyd-Doveto, p. 10
  12. ^ Degras, Jane. Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy vol 3 (Speech, 1 July 1936). pp. 194 196–198.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference SFP11 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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