Japan Office

Photograph courtesy of The Voskressenski Family (Soviet Ambassador to London Ivan Maisky, centre, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, right, on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral in September 1941)

“The Maisky Diaries: Revelations of Stalin’s Emissary to London, 1932-43”
Professor Gabriel Gorodetsky, Quondam Fellow, All Souls College 
Tuesday 5 November 2019

The terror and purges of Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s discouraged Soviet officials from leaving documentary records let alone keeping personal diaries. A remarkable exception is the unique, colourful diary assiduously kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943. His diary, unearthed in the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow by Professor Gorodetsky, grippingly depicts Britain’s drift to war during the 1930s and subsequent events in Europe. Maisky was distinguished as a diplomat by his great sociability and access to the key players in British public life.  His diary, scrupulously checked against a vast range of Russian and Western archival evidence, offers a fascinating revision of the events surrounding the Second World War, as well as an anthropological and social observation of British society and leadership by an astute outsider. 

Professor Gabriel Gorodetsky is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University. He has had a long connection to St Antony’s College where he obtained his DPhil and spent two periods as a Visiting Fellow.  He has published widely on Soviet foreign policy in the interwar period and the Second World War and is the author of several books, including “The Maisky Diaries” which has been translated into seven languages. 

Tuesday 5 November 2019
19:00 – 20:00
Lecture
UF Hall, Sanbancho UF Building 1F, 6-3 Sanbancho, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo
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20:10 – 21:30
Reception
Tony Roma’s, La Mer Sanbancho, 6-4 Sanbancho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
JPY 3,500 (payable on the door)
Map to reception venue

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