Litvinoff's Return

Off a China Clipper in San Francisco, Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff stepped on U.S. soil at week's end for the first time in eight years. After a 24-day, 20,000-mile airplane journey from Kuibyshev, Comrade Litvinoff and his snowy-haired English wife looked like any bourgeois tourists who had not had enough sleep.

But Litvinoff was glad to get back. The U.S. was the scene of his greatest diplomatic triumph: the U.S. recognition of Russia which he negotiated in Washington in 1933. But when Moscow was attempting to appease Adolf Hitler, Litvinoff's hatred for Naziism forced him into oblivion.

Now, back in good grace, he returned to the U.S. as Russia's Ambassador, entrusted with the vital job of arranging war collaboration. He arrived in a capital shocked by news of Japan's attack. Maxim Litvinoff's pleasure was tempered with gravity: Soviet Russia's greatest diplomat had stepped into the greatest responsibility he had ever known.

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