Lev Karakhan
Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan Armenian Կարախանյան Լեւոն Միքայելի, Russian Лев Михайлович Карахан was a Russian revolutionary and a Soviet diplomat. A member of the RSDLP from 1904. At first a Menshevik, he joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917.
In October 1917, he was member of the Revolutionary Military Council; then served as secretary of the Soviet delegation at the Brest-Litovsk peace talks together with Leon Trotsky and Adolph Joffe. In 1918-1920 and 1927–1934, he was the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. In 1919, he issued a statement concerning relations with China called the Karakhan Manifesto. In 1921, he was the Soviet Ambassador to Poland; in 1923–1926, the Ambassador to China; after 1934, the Ambassador to Turkey.
Karakhan was known for his dandyish appearance; Karl Radek is quoted as having "maliciously described" him as "the Ass of Classical Beauty", while a junior colleague, Alexander Barmine, wrote that "Our young staff gave him unstinted admiration, amazed that humanity could produce such perfection. He had a purity of profile such as is seen, as a rule, only on ancient coins." The British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart, who met Karakhan in 1918, described him as:
Karakhan was arrested and executed in 1937 during the Great Purge.
He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.
His third wife, Marina Semyonova, died in 2010.
