George Bakhmeteff

George Petrovich Bakhmeteff entered Russian government service in 1870 and built his career across Europe, Asia, and the United States. He served as a junior secretary in Washington and Paris, then in Greece, before becoming Russia’s representative in Bulgaria and ambassador to Japan. He returned to Washington as ambassador in 1911. His wife was the American Mary Beale. ^{1, 2}

On October 1, 1914, Bakhmeteff and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed a treaty creating a procedure for investigating disputes between their countries. Questions left unsettled by diplomacy were to go before an international commission of five members, and both governments undertook to refrain from force while an investigation was in progress. Ratifications were exchanged in Washington in March 1915. ³

In April 1915 he brought the Armenian Catholicos’s appeal for civilian protection to the American government. Bryan’s resulting instruction to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau asked him to press the Ottoman authorities to protect Armenians against violence. ⁴

The Russian Revolution ended his imperial appointment. On March 18, 1917, he nevertheless transmitted Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov’s account of the monarchy’s collapse and the Provisional Government’s promise to honor Russia’s international commitments. He retired that spring, later settled in France with his wife, and died in Paris in 1928. ^{5, 2}