Adolf Ioffe

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Adolf Abramovich Ioffe (Russian: Адольф Абрамович Иоффе) (1883— 1927) was and Old Bolshevik (since 1917) and Soviet politician.

Ioffe was born to a rich Jewish merchant family. He ioined the Russian revolutionary movement by the end of 1890s. in 1903 he joined the RSDLP and belonged to the Menshevik fraction.

He was an ambassador in China (1922-1924) and Austria (1924-1925). In 1925 he joined the Trotskyist New Opposition to Stalin. Ioffe committed suicide in 1927 while being terminally ill. Based on his suicide letter to Trotsky, some historians interpret his suicide as act of political protest when it became clear that the Trotskyists would be defeated^[1]. Trotsky's speech at his burial was the last public speech of Trotsky in the Soviet Union.