David Rothstein is a deep and thorough student of Socialism. Theoretically, he believes that he knows the only true way to cure the wounds of humanity; he reverences Marx as some men do Mohammed. But in real life he is fussy, narrow, selfish and without personal loyalty. He cannot imagine applying his doctrines to his immediate surroundings, and so he fundamentally fails.
Fresh from London, he spent his time ordering suits from the Soviet tailor and fuming because they did not fit perfectly; this in a country literally of rags. He was more worried about his son’s dismissal from Oxford than about the thousands of young men being slaughtered on the various Russian fronts. He exclaimed generously, “We must have victory no matter how many men it takes!” But he kept his own sons in England. He could never see anything in Wells’ articles for American papers except the flippant remarks about Marx which made him writhe in mental agony.
At present Rothstein is Ambassador to Persia, and Litvinov and Krassin are working in harmony.
There are many other men in the Foreign Office of interesting and varied character; very few are workmen or peasants. I will take for example, four typical men: Weinstein, Karakhan, Florinsky and Axionov.
Weinstein was one of the Editors of the Russian daily paper Novy Mir, in New York, and secretary to Ludwig Martens, who directed the Soviet Bureau on Fortieth Street. He was deported with Martens. Immediately upon his arrival in Moscow he became head of the Anglo-American Department of the Foreign Office. Almost his entire staff are ex-Americans. English is more generally spoken among them than Russian.
Michael Karakhan is head of the Eastern Department when Tchicherin is in Russia; when Tchicherin attends the conferences, he is elevated to Tchicherin’s place. Karakhan is an Armenian and, more through favorable circumstances than any astonishing ability, has achieved his high official position.
I always think of him as getting into or out of an automobile. During the first days of the revolution he “requisitioned” Rasputin’s car, a gorgeous affair which had been the gift of the Empress and was made especially for the mysterious priest. Karakhan never walks anywhere and his car is always waiting for him in front of his home or the Foreign Office. An evidence of his cleverness was his ability to keep for himself the whole lower floor of the most lovely private palace in Moscow, while Lenin and Tchicherin lived as meagerly as workmen.
He is a faultless dresser. And he has the rather dubious distinction of being the only Commissar who divorced his wife under the new marriage laws. He immediately married again.
Karakhan is one of those surprising figures of the revolution who, without possessing marked talents or great idealism, nevertheless rose to power.