[2] That year, in Kiev, Wallach joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), which was considered an illegal organization; it was customary for its members to use pseudonyms.

After 18 months in custody, Litvinov and Nikolay Bauman organised a mass escape of 11 inmates from Lukyanivska Prison, overpowering a warden and using ropes and grappling irons to scale the walls.

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.

[9][10] 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.

[16] 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.

In the wake of this mainstream social-democratic endorsement of "defensive warfare", Litvinov along with the rest of the exiled Bolsheviks in western Europe remained an outspoken public opponent of the war.

[17] On 8 November 1917, a day after the October Revolution, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) appointed Maxim Litvinov as the Soviet government's plenipotentiary representative in the United Kingdom.

[17] He was appointed to the governing collegium of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel) and immediately dispatched on an official mission to Stockholm, Sweden, where he presented a Soviet peace appeal.

[17] Litvinov was subsequently deported from Sweden but spent the next months as a roving diplomat for the Soviet government, helping to broker a multilateral agreement allowing the exchange of prisoners of war from a range of combatants, including Russia, the UK and France.

[17] This successful negotiation amounted to de facto recognition of the new revolutionary Russian government by the other signatories to the agreement and established Litvinov's importance in Soviet diplomacy.

[17] Litvinov tried to intervene in Britain's internal politics, agreeing to the request of the Daily Herald, a newspaper supporting the Labour Party, to ask the Soviet government for financial assistance.

Despairing of early American recognition for the Irish Republic, President of the Dáil Éireann Éamon de Valera had redirected his envoy Patrick McCartan from Washington to Moscow.

[32] Litvinov replied that "The British Foreign Office has been misled by a gang of professional forgers and swindlers, and had it known the dubious sources of its information, its note of 7 September [1921] would never have been produced", stating that the complaints of anti-British activities were in part based on such fictitious reports.

[17] According to diplomatic historian Jonathan Haslam, Litvinov was less erudite and coarser than Chicherin but was willing to deal in good faith with the West for peace and a pause for Soviet Russia to pursue internal development.

The lack of results of the search of the Trade Delegation premises, which was carried out with utmost thoroughness over several days, is the most convincing proof of the loyalty and correctitude of the official agents of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.

[51] Litvinov favoured Soviet participation in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which pledged signatories to the elimination of the use of war as a tool of foreign policy, a position opposite to that of his nominal superior Chicherin.

No contemporary statesman could point to such a record of criticisms justified and prophecies fulfilled.Litvinov has been considered to have concentrated on taking strong measures against Italy, Japan and Germany, and being little interested in other matters.

[63] At the time of the Moscow Trials, Litvinov was appointed to a committee that decided the fate of Bukharin and Rykov, voting for them to be expelled and tried but not executed, they were eventually handed to the NKVD.

[80] The Foreign Office confirmed to the US chargé d'affaires on 8 August 1939 "the military mission, which had now left for Moscow, had been told to make every effort to prolong discussions until 1 October 1939".

Sheinis states when foreign correspondents first asked Litvinov about the Pact, he evaded the question, but then said: "I think this calls for a closer look, because among other things enemies of the Soviet Union ascribe to me what I never said".

"[98] Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain, and pro-Western orientation by Kremlin standards, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany.

One British official wrote Litvinov's disappearance meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber, while Molotov's modus operandi was "more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan".

[101] Hitler also wrote to Benito Mussolini that Litvinov's dismissal demonstrated the Kremlin's readiness to alter relations with Berlin, which led to "the most extensive nonaggression pact in existence".

"[103] American historian Jeffrey Herf views Litvinov's dismissal and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as conclusive proof the Nazi belief in a Jewish conspiracy that supposedly controlled the governments of the Soviet Union and other allied powers was completely false.

Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Litvinov said in a radio broadcast to Britain and the United States: "We always realized the danger which a Hitler victory in the West could constitute for us".

After the United States entered the war, he encouraged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to focus on the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre to prevent Axis forces in North Africa from advancing towards the Caucasus.

President Roosevelt stated Litvinov's appointment was "most fortunate that the Soviet Government have deemed it advisable to send as ambassador a statesman who has already held high office in his own country".

[121]Litvinov immediately gained popularity and was instrumental in lobbying for billions of dollars worth of Lend-Lease military and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the Soviet Union.

[122] In early December 1941, the Soviet Union's war-relief organisation called a large meeting in Madison Square, New York City, where the auditorium was filled to capacity.

[citation needed] In his reminiscences dictated to a supporter later in life, Vyacheslav Molotov—Litvinov's replacement as chief of foreign affairs and right-hand man of Joseph Stalin—said Litvinov was "intelligent" and "first rate" but said Stalin and he "didn't trust him" and consequently "left him out of negotiations" with the United States during the war.