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RUSSIA'S DISRAELI
y\. True Portrait of Europe s Master Diplomat — Maxim Litvinoff
F ROM synagogue to Soviet, from “chassid"
to Communist and Bolshevik diplomat—such
has been the fantastic transition of Maxim
Litvinoff, the distinguished People’s Commissar
tor Foreign Affairs, who is visiting this country,
to straighten out the many important details in
onnection with the resumption of diplomatic re
lations between Washington and Moscow.
Of all the leading figures produced in Russia
oner Lenin’s October revolution 1 know of
none who had a more remarkable and more
adventurous career than Litvinoff. In his
vouth before he became an ardent Com
munist he was a pious Jew, wearing side
curls and a long kapote. And long before
he dreamt of a proletarian revolution he
.taped a "revolution” of his own against
•he Kotsker rabbi, whom he deserted for
the Slonimer rabbi. From this ghetto
chrysalis he emerged into one of the most
daring revolutionists against the Czarist
tyranny, later became one of the founders
4 the Bolshevik regime, and today he oc
cupies a leading position among the success
ful statesmen of the world.
I p to quite recently Litvinoff’s ante-
edents and pre-Communist background
were shrouded in a veil of mystery. He
himself has never made reference to it, so
far as I am aware, and during my stay in
Moscow as correspondent I found him ex
tremely reticent on this point. However,
from conversations with persons who have
known Litvinoff for many years, I learned
'omc very interesting facts about his early
life which have since been substantiated by
revelations in the Polish press.
Maxim Litvinoff’s real name is Meyer
Mallach. He originates from Bialystok,
Poland, where he has a number of relatives,
among them a first cousin, Feiwel Wallach.
An older brother, Abraham Jacob Wallach,
a cloth merchant, resides in the city of
LhI/. Litvinoff’s grandfather was for
thirty years a rabbi in the town of Rudzi-
now, near Slonim.
His father, Moses Wallach, was em
ployed as a clerk in a Bialystok bank, earn-
>ng a salary of ten rubles a week. Phis
was regarded in those days as a handsome
income and it enabled Moses Wallach to give his
child ren a good education. He engaged tutors to
in>truct them not only in the Talmud but also
in secular subjects.
T appears, however, that Meyer (the future
'Ia\im Litvinoff) was not a very apt or assiduous
>tud nt. His relatives recall him as a dreamy-eyed
l’ 0 .' who neglected his studies. He was given to
roaming the ghetto streets as if lost in a trance,
or cise he would sit for hours in the synagogue
d, hardly looking at the open book before him,
r ' | i> ips clamped in tight silence, his eyes riveted
n ie window, dreaming. Those who knew him
rhei p U t him down as dull, but of course they
since found reason to think otherwise,
hat caused the youthful Meyer to rebel
*£ a ist the Kotsker rabbi and to transfer his
iance to the Slonimer rabbi, no one seems to
cn mber. But that such a "revolution was
ied out by him has been vouched for both by
” ,s mother and his cousin.
By Leo M. Classman
Maxim Litvinoff, Russia's Minister of foreign affairs,
has hern instrumental in obtaining recognition of the
l SSR by the l nited States. Litvinoff, Europe's most
successful statesman, started life as a Yeshiva Rochur.
His career is fascinating. Read it in this article by
Leo M. Classman, foreign correspondent, who met Lit-
vinoff on various occasions in the course of his work
in .Moscow.
When Litvinoff concluded his term of conscrip
tion service in the Czar’s army his father found
employment for him in the establishment of a cloth
merchant in the city of Winitza. Litvinoff at
that time must have been imbued already with revo
lutionary ideas but his family was not aware of
it until some months later, when a letter arrived
from the Winitza cloth merchant to the effect
that Meyer had been placed under arrest for
seditious activities.
Old Moses Wallach hastened to Winitza and
after many frantic efforts costing a pretty penny
he succeeded in having his son released on parole.
But several weeks later Meyer was back behind
prison bars.
That was the beginning of the exciting and
dangerous career of Maxim Litvinoff. From then
on it was one continuous series of subrosa revo
lutionary activities, punctuated by prison terms,
Siberian exile, escapes abroad, persecution by the
European police—all of which came to an end
with the 'Ten Days that Shook the World, when
Litvinoff became, instead of a hounded revolu
tionist, a founder of a new social order and an
important participant in the reshaping of Russia’s
destinies.
Long ago, when Litvinoff’s relatives realized
that he had become a confirmed revolutionary,
they turned their back on him; he was put down
as the black sheep of the family. But when Litvi
noff came to Warsaw several years back on
as Vice Commissar of
Foreign Affairs, his brother Abraham Jacob
made a special trip from Lodz with the
aim of renewing the broken fraternal bonds
with his now distinguished kin. Litvinoff,
however, refused to see his brother.
This incident should not lead any one to
think that Litvinoff has been metamor
phosed into a cold unemotional Bolshevik
whose doctrinaire ideology shuts out all feel
ings of personal affection. I f his family could
find it in their heart to forsake him for so
many years simply because he was a noncon
formist in their conventional view, then l
suppose it is only natural that he should re
turn the compliment. As a matter of fact,
Litvinoff in his private life, like some of
the other important Bolshevik leaders, is
a very warm and thoroughly human person.
Perhaps this is best illustrated in connection
with his wife, Ivy Low Litvinoff.
Madame Litvinoff is English, the niece
of Sir Sidney Low', the historian and
author of " The Political History of the
Reign of Queen Victoria.” She is also re
lated to the late Sir Maurice Low, w'ho
was Washington correspondent of the Lon
don Morning Post. She herself is a writer
of some talent. She is the author of several
novels and of numerous magazine articles.
There is nothing particularly proletarian
about Madame Litvinoff’s appearance or
behavior, though no one can question the
complete sincerity of her Bolshevist ideals.
But she is primarily a well bred, though
highly emotional, English lady, brilliant,
witty and vivacious, who sometimes does
and says things that cut against the grain
of the more literal minded unhumorous
Communists. I think it is a tribute to her
character that despite her aristocratic background
she has joyfully shared with her husband all the
trying hardships and hazards of a revolutionary
life both before and since the rise of the Soviet
regime. 'This great loyalty and devotion on her
part have been fully reciprocated by Litvinoff.
Just how significant this is can be gathered from
the fact that in some influential Communist cir
cles there has been for years a very strong resent
ment against the unproletarian Madame Litvinoff
and pressure has been brought to bear time and
again on the Foreign Affairs Commissar to di
vorce her. In 1929 Madame Litvinoff aroused
the special ire of the Communist press by pub
lishing an article in the bourgeois Berliner Tage-
blatt wherein she recorded her impressions of a
visit to Berlin. She described with a tinge of
sarcasm yet with an understone of unmistakable
admiration, perhaps unconscious on her part, the
fashionable shops of the German capital, the ele
gant figures riding (Please turn to page 21)
MAXIM LITVINOFF
The black sheep of the family.
TH
SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
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