The Soviet diplomat Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (1876-1951) was perhaps the best-known Bolshevik diplomat of his time and certainly the most successful in establishing cooperative efforts with the Western powers against the Nazi menace.

Maxim Litvinov, whose real name was Meyer Wallach, was born on July 17, 1876, to an impoverished Jewish family in Bialystok. Leaving Bialystok, he went to the Ukraine and in 1898 joined the newly founded Russian Social Democratic Labor party, spending most of his time recruiting supporters in the Kiev area. In 1903, when the party divided into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, he opted for the Bolsheviks and established close ties with several Bolsheviks from the Caucasus area, notably Joseph Stalin.

For the next 15 years Litvinov roamed all over western Europe on various errands of daring for the Bolshevik cause, adopting all sorts of aliases to avoid police. At various times he was known as Kuznetsov, "Papasha" (literally, "Poppa...