Lev Karakhan

Lev Karakhan

Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan (Karakhanian) Armenian Կարախանյան Լեւոն Միքայելի, Russian Лев Михайлович Карахан (20 January 1889, Tiflis – 20 September 1937, Moscow) was an ethnic Armenian-born Russian revolutionary and a Soviet diplomat. A member of the RSDLP from 1904. At first a Menshevik, he joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917.

In October 1917, he was member of the Revolutionary Military Council; then served as secretary of the Soviet delegation at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks together with Lev Trotsky and Adolph Joffe. In 1918-1920 and 1927–1934, he was the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In 1919, he issued a statement concerning relations with China called the Karakhan Manifesto. In 1921, he was the Soviet Ambassador to Poland; in 1923-1926, the Ambassador to China; after 1934, the Ambassador to Turkey.

Karakhan was arrested and executed in 1937 during the Great Purge.

He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

His third wife (the civil marriage), Marina Semyonova, died in 2010.


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