Stalin and Mao listened to him

Sergei Tikhvinsky - academician, diplomat and patriot

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the outstanding Russian diplomat and major scientist Sergei Leonidovich Tikhvinsky - a legendary man who has gone through a long and bright life path of serving the Motherland. His “baptism of fire” in the diplomatic field took place at the age of 20, when in May 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin received the Chairman of the Legislative Yuan (Parliament) of China, Sun Fo, the son of the prominent Chinese political and statesman Sun Yat-sen. The young sinologist had to translate for the leader in the presence of the head of government and head of the Soviet foreign policy department Vyacheslav Molotov, People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov, as well as Deputy Head of Government and People's Commissar of Foreign Trade Anastas Mikoyan.

Sergei Tikhvinsky successfully completed the translation, and this predetermined the direction of his work. On October 1, 1939, he flew to Urumqi, the main city of the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where the Consulate General of the USSR was located. Returning to Moscow in 1940, he passed the exams as an external student and, having graduated from the Chinese department of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, became an employee of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR. During the war, the diplomat went to the front more than once, accompanying foreign delegations. In December 1943, he and his family left for a new job at the USSR Embassy in Chongqing (Beijing was then occupied by the Japanese). Having temporarily returned to Moscow, on July 30, 1945, Tikhvinsky defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Sun Yat-sen’s principle of “nationalism” and his foreign policy.”

In 1946-1948, Sergei Tikhvinsky worked as vice-consul, and in 1948-1949 as consul general of the USSR in Peiping (as Beijing was called in those years). In the summer of 1949, he met and talked with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. The diplomat was present in Tiananmen Square during the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. After the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the PRC, he immediately received the position of adviser to the USSR Embassy in Beijing and charge d'affaires. Later, in an interview with Vremya Novostey, Sergei Tikhvinsky recalled that Mao Zedong asked to come to Moscow many times, but Joseph Stalin answered the Chinese leader every time: “If it becomes known that you are in the USSR, then a shadow will immediately be cast on the CPC in the sense that that the party is not independent in its actions.” The two leaders met only in December 1949 at the celebration of Stalin’s 70th birthday in Moscow.

In 1950-1953, Sergei Leonidovich worked in the central office of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, traveled as part of the Soviet delegations to the USA at the V and VII sessions of the UN General Assembly. In a conversation with VN, he told how in 1951, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Andreevich Gromyko left the conference in San Francisco to conclude a peace treaty with Japan due to the fact that PRC delegates were not allowed to attend: “Meanwhile, in the text There was a clause in the treaty that suited the USSR quite well—Japan’s renunciation of all territories outside the four Japanese islands proper. The Japanese authorities, under the pretext that the USSR did not sign the treaty, began to obstruct the work of Soviet diplomats in Tokyo.”

On September 25, 1953, Andrei Gromyko sent a note to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev with a proposal to approve Tikhvinsky as an adviser to the USSR Embassy in Great Britain. The diplomat actively participated in the Soviet-Japanese negotiations on restoring diplomatic relations that began in London in June 1955. According to his recollections, Khrushchev’s desire to quickly resolve the territorial problem weakened the negotiating position of the Soviet delegation.

On May 5, 1956, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appointed Tikhvinsky as head of the Soviet representative office in Tokyo. The name of the hero of the day is closely connected with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and China and Japan. After the ratification of the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration that same year, the diplomat notified the Japanese Foreign Ministry of the closure of the USSR representative office on December 12 and the opening of the USSR Embassy in Tokyo on December 14. At that time, things were moving toward concluding a peace treaty with Japan, but, according to Tikhvinsky, “the Americans were extremely irritated by this.” Regarding Tokyo’s current claims to the Southern Kuril Islands, the hero of the day noted in an interview with VN that now Russia “doesn’t need to get involved in the fuss around the islands,” and Japan is “interested in the peace treaty only as a tool for realizing territorial claims”: “But they are not feasible, because San “The Francis Treaty of 1951 confirmed the status of the Kuril Islands, or more precisely, Japan’s lack of rights to them.”

In 1957-1960, Tikhvinsky, by that time already a Doctor of Historical Sciences, worked as head of the Asian countries department of the State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries under the USSR Council of Ministers. In 1960, he became director of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1961-1963 - deputy director of the Institute of Asian Peoples of the USSR Academy of Sciences, then - deputy director of the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System of the USSR Academy of Sciences, combining rich practical experience with scientific creativity.

In November 1965, the head of the USSR Foreign Ministry, Andrei Gromyko, submitted to the CPSU Central Committee a proposal to appoint Tikhvinsky as head of the Asia department of the then specially created Directorate for Planning Foreign Policy Activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1980-1986, Sergei Leonidovich Tikhvinsky was the rector of the Diplomatic Academy of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (this was one of the best periods of its work). He also worked at MGIMO and UNESCO, and was editor-in-chief of the journal “New and Contemporary History”. Now the hero of the day is the head of the National Committee of Historians at the Russian Academy of Sciences and advisor to the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, honorary chairman of the board of the Russian-Chinese Friendship Society. Academician Tikhvinsky is a laureate of the USSR State Prize and the author of many works on the modern and recent history of the countries of the Far East, mainly China, and the history of international relations, from which generations of not only Soviet and Russian, but also foreign sinologists studied. By presidential decree in 2000, Tikhvinsky was among the first to be awarded the honorary title “Honored Worker of the Diplomatic Service.” The scientist has just completed work on a new book, “China’s Perception of the Image of Russia.”

Friends and colleagues of Sergei Leonidovich note his exceptional efficiency and organization among his qualities. And also the sincerity of this Man with a capital P, attentive and caring attitude towards people. I would like to sincerely and warmly wish the hero of the day good health, great happiness and many more years of fruitful work for the benefit of the Fatherland and its science.

Eleonora MERKULOVA, senior researcher at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, candidate of historical sciences