Mikhail Menshikov

Mikhail Menshikov’s route into diplomacy passed through military service, economics, and foreign trade. Born in 1902, he trained in accounting, attended a military school, and graduated from the Plekhanov Institute in 1930. The Voronezh historical encyclopedia records his participation in the suppression of the Antonov peasant rebellion in 1920–1921. He subsequently worked for Soviet cooperative organizations in Britain and rose through the foreign trade administration, becoming minister of foreign trade in 1949–1951. ¹

He later represented the Soviet Union in India and Nepal. At his February 1958 credentials meeting in Washington, Menshikov told President Dwight Eisenhower that earlier service with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration had taken him to Washington and several European countries. Drawing on that experience, he proposed broad American contacts and pressed for a meeting of heads of government. Eisenhower replied that a summit needed careful preparation if it was to produce useful results. ^{1, 2}

Menshikov helped arrange Nikita Khrushchev’s September 1959 American visit through repeated discussions with Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy. His relationship with Eisenhower remained difficult: as officials planned the Camp David talks, the president privately expressed distrust of the ambassador and said he would prefer to exclude him from those discussions. ^{3, 4}

After the Washington assignment, Menshikov served as foreign minister of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1962 to 1968. His recollections of the embassy appeared posthumously in Washington, 16th Street, published in 1986. He died in 1976. ¹