Vladimir Nikolaevich Pavlov

Vladimir Nikolayevich Pavlov ( Russian Владимир Николаевич Павлов ; * 1915 , † 1993 in Moscow ) was a Ukrainian - Soviet diplomat and translator. Pavlov was best known as First Counselor in the rank of Ambassador to the Soviet Mission in Berlin in 1939 and 1940, and as a participant in the great Allied conferences from 1942 to 1945. As an interpreter of Stalin , he enjoyed his trust.

Live and act

Pavlov (back row, far right from the observer's point of view, next to Stalin) as a witness at the signing of the "Hitler-Stalin Pact" on August 23, 1939 in Moscow.

Vladimir Pavlov was born in Ukraine. (A little credible "Soviet political legend" states the contrary, that Pavlov illegitimate son of Stalin and a Volga German was said to be mother.) As a child learned Pavlov self-taught German and English . He studied in Moscow at the Institute for Energy Technology and graduated in 1939 as an engineer for heating technology . His intention to do a doctorate was dashed because in the course of his admission procedure to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) he was appointed to the diplomatic service due to his very good language skills. He then entered the service of the People's Commissariat (Ministry) for Foreign Affairs.

As an employee of Vyacheslav Molotov , Pavlov was appointed chief interpreter of the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1939, when Molotov was appointed Foreign Minister as successor to Litvinov . Here he used his German and English language skills, later he also acquired knowledge of Spanish and French .

When Molotov met the ambassador of Afghanistan in the summer of 1939 , Pavlov was acting for the first time as an interpreter for the new foreign minister.

In August of the same year Pavlov took part as a translator in the negotiations between the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his superior Molotov on the one hand, and the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the German Ambassador to Moscow Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg on the other hand, which concluded the so-called German-Soviet non-aggression pact (also called Hitler-Stalin Pact or Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). Pavlov took part in the signing of the non-aggression treaty on the evening of August 23, 1939 in the Kremlin as a liaison interpreter and control reader of the German-language version of the contract signed by Stalin and Molotov.

From the end of 1939 to December 1940, Pavlov acted as First Secretary or First Counselor at the Soviet Embassy in Berlin. According to some sources, his work as counselor corresponded to the "rank of ambassador". "In any case," according to Der Spiegel, in 1949, during his time in Berlin, Pavlov was "more powerful than the incumbent [Soviet] ambassador Shkwarzew."

In November 1940 Pavlov again acted as the official translator in negotiations at the highest level, this time during the negotiations between Molotov and the German dictator Hitler in the Berlin Reich Chancellery. In addition to translating from German into Russian and vice versa, Pavlov also prepared the minutes of the negotiations for the Soviet side. After his return to Moscow in December 1940, Pavlov was appointed director of the Central European Department in the Soviet Foreign Ministry in addition to his work as an interpreter. There he was entrusted with the ministerial analysis and evaluation of Anglo-Soviet relations.

Pavlov (in the middle, behind Stalin and Truman) as a participant in the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. To the right of the three Gromyko

From 1942 to 1945 Pavlov took part in most of the inter-allied war conferences as a constant companion of Stalin and Molotov. For example, he translated the conversations between Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt and their collaborators during the Tehran Conference (1943), the Yalta Conference (1945) and the Potsdam Conference (1945). In addition, Pavlov took part in the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 . From 1947 to 1949 he was employed at the Soviet missions in London, where he studied “the climate of British politics” and occupied “an important listening post in the West” before being transferred to the Soviet embassy in Paris at the end of the 1940s as counselor. Pavlov, who at that time was already being acted as future Soviet foreign minister in the West, played an important role, especially in the negotiations of the Four Power Conference of Foreign Ministers in Paris in 1949.

From 1949 to 1953 Pavlov worked - with a brief interruption due to his assignment as secretary of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs at the Central Committee of the CPSU - in Moscow as head of Europe Department II in the Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union.

After Stalin's death and Khrushchev's rise to power , Pavlov was kept away from key diplomatic tasks. Molotov and Khrushchev made him head of the Moscow publishing house for foreign language literature, which from 1963 traded as the Progress publishing house.

In 1974 Pavlov was retired with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Soviet Union. After that, he appeared on various occasions in interviews in which he spoke about the controversial additional protocol to the Hitler-Stalin pact . On September 29, 1987, Pawlos handed over his "autobiographical notes" to the Soviet Foreign Ministry. The Ministry had asked him to formulate his memories of the German-Soviet cooperation after 1939 and of the cooperation with the Allies after 1941.

Evaluation by contemporaries and historical research

Pavlov entered the international limelight for the first time in 1939 as an interpreter when the Hitler-Stalin Pact was signed in August and the German-Soviet border treaty in September. The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, to whom he was introduced by Stalin himself, made the observation that the "young, blonde Russian interpreter Pavlov, seemed to enjoy Stalin's special trust". An article in the journal History Today , looking back in 1995, endorsed this assessment and judged "Stalin trusted him [Pavlov]."

The German ambassador to the Soviet Union, Count von der Schulenburg, had already reported to Berlin a few months earlier that “a very strong Ukrainian influence” could be observed in the Kremlin. As the source of this he believed he could identify “the translator Pavlov”, who was always close to Stalin and was nicknamed “our little Ukrainian” by him. The Khrushchev biographer Alexandrow, however, rejected Schulenburg's assessment by pointing out that he could not imagine that someone of "Pavlov's [small] stature" could have influenced Molotov or Stalin. Even Herman Wouk saw in Pavlov only a "thin, pale, dark-haired [sic] young man" who is not a secret mastermind was, on the contrary, Stalin against always a "smart, eager trying to servility mine the day" have put .

A German memo from 1940 described Pavlov, at that time counselor at the Soviet mission in Berlin, as "the favorite animal of Mr. Stalin and Mr. Molotov." In Berlin diplomatic circles, Pavlov was considered "the youngest diplomat of his rank in the long history of diplomacy." ”(Der Spiegel) at that time as“ Stalin's favorite son ”and was watched with corresponding interest. The American correspondent Pierre J. Huss described him as "the boy who told Stalin the really important things that were going on in Berlin".

Just like the Germans, Pavlov's constant closeness to the mighty powers of the Soviet Union was not hidden from the politicians and journalists of the democratic states of the West. A reporter for the American Times magazine therefore pointed out to his readers at the beginning of 1945 that Pavlov (the “worn-out interpreter”) was “Molotov's man” who accompanied him “everywhere”. Pavlov also enjoyed particular sympathy on the part of the Western allies from the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill . He not only mentioned the interpreter in his memoirs, but also repeatedly tried - with rather modest success - to encourage the young man, whom he found a little stiff, to consume cocktails and other alcoholic beverages at their conference meetings between 1942 and 1945 .

In many testimonials, positive judgments are made about Pavlov's skills as a translator: In retrospect , Pavlov's colleague Valentin M. Bereschkow highlighted the extraordinary hard work and perseverance that he showed in his work and that always amazed him, Bereschkow . In particular, he notes Pavlov's enormous daily workload of 14 to 16 hours and his eagerness to constantly improve his language skills. Sharing Berezhkov's assessment, Time magazine praised Pavlov as a “brilliant interpreter” who was able to take shorthand notes in English from conversations in Russian and vice versa. An observer of the founding conference of the United Nations described Pavlov again as a "thin young man with a high voice" who knows how to translate Molotov's words in such a way that they would "shoot like bullets through the boardroom". In addition, Time magazine observed in another issue that while Pavlov spoke English with a “pronounced British accent,” he also had a keen ear for the subtleties and peculiarities of American English and was easy to use because of his pleasantly penetrating voice Could be heard. In 1949, Der Spiegel praised the fact that Pavlov was not only able to "translate words [from one language to the other]", but that he also "had an excellent understanding" of the ability, which is just as important for an interpreter, "alternately to match the mentality of both partners. "

Similar positive judgments about Pavlov's qualities as an interpreter can be found with the American General James Francis Byrnes , who calls Pavlov a “capable translator”, with Hough, who describes him as a “brilliant interpreter”, with Harold Stassen , who thinks Pavlov is a “master of the English language and all of its idioms was an outstanding interpreter during the UN conference ”and for Cheryl Heckler, who speaks of Pavlov as a“ well-trained translator ”. And KPS Menon gave a brief verdict in 1963: "He is one of the world's best interpreters."

Critical voices about Pavlov's work have also come down to us. Arthur Birse, Churchill's translator, said that Pavlov's grammar was not always perfect, although he was rarely missing a word. Even Charles Bohlen noted Pavlov's English was not perfect. Pavlov himself wrote in retrospect that he had been unsure in some cases, especially in the first two years as a translator.

The American writer Upton Sinclair accounted for Pavlov's post-war fame as "the man by Stalin's side" in 1949 by calling him a "bespectacled young translator" on the sidelines of the plot of his novel "O Shepherd, Speak!" let occur.

A much-cited anecdote can be considered indicative of Pavlov's professional, unshakable way of working, according to which he even continued his translation work unmoved when the British Chief of Staff Sir Alan Brooke once told him, at the height of a verbal argument with Stalin at a banquet , emptied a dessert over the head.

literature

• Jörn Happel : Stalin's voice. The interpreter Vladimir Pavlov . In: Osteuropa , Vol. 62 (2012), H. 4, pp. 69–79.

Web links

• Interview (russ.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BI Žiljaev: Sovetsko-amerikanskie otnošenija. 1939-1945. Moskva: Meždunarodnyj Fund "Demokratieija", 2004, ISBN 5-85646-141-X .
2. ↑ On the position of trust with Stalin see Happel: Stalin's Voice .
3. ^ Peter Kleist: Hitler and Stalin 1933-1945 , Bonn 1950, p. 241.
4. ↑ Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 71.
5. ^ Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 73.
6. ↑ On this briefly Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 73
7. ^ Reuben Ainsztein: Stalin and June 22, 1941. Some New Soviet Views , in: International Affairs Vol. 42, No. 4, 1966, p. 665; Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 74.
8. ↑ Quarterly Issues for Contemporary History 39 (1991), 3rd issue , p. 466 (PDF, 7.72 MB)
9. ↑ ^{a b} "Please no ovations", in: Der Spiegel 23/1949, p. 13.
10. ↑ Pavel Petrovich Sevostianov: Before the Nazi invasion. Soviet Diplomacy in September 1939 – June 1941 , 1984, p. 272.
11. ↑ [1] .
12. ^ Warren F. Kimball : "A Different Take on FDR at Tehran" . Central Intelligence Agency website , accessed April 14, 2008
13. ↑ Der Spiegel 1949.
14. ^ Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 74.
15. ↑ Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 75.
16. ↑ Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 78.
17. ^ History Today , May 1995, Vol. 45, Issue 5.
18. ↑ Quoted from: Myroslav Prokop: Die Ukraine und Moskaus Ukrainepolitik , 1986, p. 122.
19. ↑ On the background to Schulenburg's perception, see also Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 74.
20. ↑ Victor Alexandrov: Khrushchev of the Ukraine. A Biography , 1957, p. 69. (in the original: " I do not believe that anyone of that particular caliber could have influenced Stalin or Molotow ")
21. ↑ Herman Wouk: "The Winds of War", 1973, p. 868. In the original: "A thin, pale, dark-haired, young man with a clever, anxiously servile expression."
22. ↑ United States Department of State: Department of State Publication , 1948, p. 164.
23. ↑ Pierre J. Huss: Heil! And Farewell! , 1943, p. 57.
24. ↑ Times Magazin 1945. Visually, Pavlov is described as "a pale, thin guy of 29 years".
25. ^ Cyrus Leo Sulzberger: A Long Row of Candles. Memoirs and Diaries, 1934-1954 , 1969, p. 749.
26. ↑ See the obituary in the news magazine Der Spiegel , 49/1998 from November 30, 1998.
27. ↑ [2] . In the original it says “ [I was] always struck by [his] diligence and persistence. “At the same time, Berezhkov emphasizes that" there were merely a few people who were invited to perform at top-level meetings ". This is why Mary Irene Curzon speaks Ravensdale: In Many Rhythms. An Autobiography , 1953, p. 284 also from him as the "foremost interpreter at all the Stalin-Churchill-Roosevelt meetings".
28. ↑ Time Magazine, Monday, November 29, 1943, article "Rendevouz with Destiny".
29. ^ Report on San Francisco. A Selection of Editorials, New Dispatches and [...] , 1945, p. 44. The original says: “A thin young man with a high treble voice, made them riccochet”.
30. ↑ In the original: '' a decided British accent '' or '' [He] has an accurate ear for the idiom and nuances of American speech ''. His '' penetrating voice '' is said to have appealed to Roosevelt [terminally ill and therefore poorly concentrated] in Yalta, because it could have been heard so easily.
31. ↑ Der Spiegel 6/1949.
32. ↑ James Francis Byrnes: Speaking Frankly , 1947, p. 68. In the original capable interpreter . Also United States Government Printing Office : United States Congressional Serial Set , 1980, p. 171. "a very able interpreter".
33. ↑ Richard Hough: Mountbatten , 1981, p. 199. In the original "brilliant interpreter"
34. ↑ Harold Stassen: Where I Stand! , 1947, p. 18. At a later point (p. 14) he optically characterizes Pavlov as "the pale, skinny, nervous interpreter"
35. ^ Cheryl Heckler: An Accidental Journalist. The Adventures of Edmund Stevens, 1934-1945 , 2007, p. 203. In the original a skilled interpreter .
36. ↑ KPS Menon: The Flying Troika , 1963, p. 27.
37. ↑ See on this Happel: Stalin's Voice , p. 76.
38. ↑ Upton Sinclair: O Shepherd, Speak! , 1949, p. 175.
39. ^ John SD Eisenhower: Allies, Pearl Harbor to D-Day , 1982, p. 418. Eisenhower speaks of a "great cake of ice cream". Oliver Warner ( Admiral of the Fleet. Cunningham of Hyndhope , 1967, p. 231), however, speaks of "a vast ice-pudding".