ABSTRACT
The March Revolution and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty struck Maxim Litvinov like a bolt from the blue, and soon he would be named Soviet Russia’s first representative to Britain, a task for which he was wholly unprepared. Litvinov remained very much a political man even though he had grave doubts about Lenin’s chances for success in Russia. Litvinov considered telephoning someone in the new Provisional Government but decided that those officials faced more important matters. Litvinov learned of the monumental events of 7 November, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in the name of the Petrograd Soviet and in a relatively bloodless coup swept aside Aleksandr Kerenskii’s government, from the London papers. The British Foreign Office did attempt to prevent anything as drastic as Litvinov’s arrest, despite the readiness of the Home Office to do just that. Ivan Maisky, however, claimed that Litvinov told him a somewhat different story.
