Jakob Suritz (11 December 1882 – 2 January 1952), also known by the Russian version of his name, Yakov Zakharovich Surits (Яков Захарович Суриц), was a Soviet diplomat best known for serving as the Soviet ambassador to France during the Danzig crisis.
Revolutionary Diplomat Suritz was born in Dvinsk in the Russian empire (modern Daugavpils, Latvia) into a middle class Jewish family. His father, Zakhary Suritz owned a jewelry store, and his mother, Reizi Suritz was a house wife. He was at first active in the main Jewish socialist group in the Russian empire, the General Jewish Labour Bund, which he joined in 1902. In 1903, he joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party. In 1905, he took part in the Revolution of 1905. In 1907, he was arrested for his revolutionary activities and exiled to the Tobolsk Governorate in Siberia. In 1908, he married Elizaveta Nikolaevna Karpova, by whom he had two daughters. In 1910, he was released from internal exile and went to Germany to study philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Russia.
After the October Revolution of 1917, Suritz defected and joined the Bolsheviks along with his friends Ivan Maisky and Alexander Troyanovsky, both of whom also served as ambassadors for the Soviet Union. In 1917, the new Bolshevik Foreign Commissar Leon Trotsky disbanded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and created the Narkomindel (Narodnyi Komissariat Inostrannykh Del-People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs) in its place. Trotsky demanded that all Russian diplomats abroad swear loyalty to the new regime or be fired; the vast majority chose the latter option. Suffering from a serious shortage of experienced diplomats, Trotsky was forced to recruit former Mensheviks such as Suritz into the Narkomindel to serve as diplomats. Suritz had no experience as a diplomat and was only recruited because he was fluent in German and French (the latter being the language of diplomacy at the time).
Suritz initially served as the Soviet minister to Denmark. Subsequently, Suritz was sent to Kabul to serve as the first Soviet minister to Afghanistan. Suritz was described having "arrived like a hurricane" in Kabul in December 1919 as he sent out to convince the Emir Amanullah Khan that he should align Afghanistan with Soviet Russia against the British empire. The fact that the Emir Amanullah had just been defeated in the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 greatly aided Suritz's efforts. From 1920 to 1922, Suritz was also a member of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From 29 May 1922 to 27 April 1923, Suritz served as the Soviet minister in Oslo.
Ambassador in Ankara From 14 June 1923 to 19 June 1934, Suritz served as the Soviet ambassador to Turkey. Rudolf Nadolny, the German ambassador in Ankara reported: "My Russian colleague Jakob Suritz was a very nice man...I immediately became friends with him and we later made a gentleman's pact that he would only pursue political interests in Turkey, supporting me in my economic endeavors, and I in turn would back him in politics. We both remain faithful to this agreement, which borne rich fruits" .
In April 1926, Suritz formally opened the new Soviet embassy, which was the first embassy in Ankara. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had moved the Turkish capital to Ankara, but for some times afterwards the embassies remained in Istanbul as other governments believed that Ankara was only a temporary capital. The decision to move the Soviet embassy in Turkey from Istanbul to Ankara was a gesture of friendship towards the new Turkish republic as a sign that the Soviet Union supported Kemal's claim that Ankara was the new capital of Turkey. The new Soviet embassy was built in a style that gave it an "ultra-modern appearance" with "soaring porches" that resembled the "wings of an airplane". The modernist style of the Soviet embassy that had no links to any of the architectural styles of the Russian past was intended to symbolize that the Soviet Union represented a rupture with the past and was the start of something new. Likewise, the modernism of the Soviet embassy was intended to symbolize the universalism of Communism as the modernist look of the Soviet embassy could just as easily being seen in any other structure built in a modernist style anywhere else in the world. Finally, the new Soviet embassy in Ankara was meant to symbolize the way that a backward nation was modernizing under the new Bolshevik regime with its modernist style serving as a symbol of progress and advancement. At the time, the Soviet embassy was unlike any other building in Ankara and caused a sensation when it was opened.
Suritz was close to President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and arranged for him along with his premier İsmet İnönü to attend a lavish banquet at the Soviet embassy in 1927 to honor the 10th anniversary of the October revolution. Soviet leaders in the 1920s saw Britain as their principle enemy and Kemal 's Turkish nationalist policies, which often pitted him against Britain, led to an informal Soviet-Turkish alliance. The Soviet Union was committed to the destruction of the established international system, and the Soviets allied themselves to any nation that wished to challenge the international order such as Germany in Europe, Turkey in the Middle East and China in Asia. During the Greek-Turkish war of 1920-1922, Britain supported Greece while the Soviet Union supported Turkey. However, Kemal did not wish for a complete break with Britain not the least because he did not want Turkey to become too dependent upon the Soviet Union and he preferred to rebuild the strained Anglo-Turkish relations after the League of Nations decided the Mosul dispute in favor of Britain in 1926. At one ball at the Çankaya Mansion, Kemal was careful enough to place himself between Suritz seated on his left and the British ambassador, Sir George Clerk, seated on his right to symbolize his desire to be desire to keep Turkey in-between the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Clerk noted that anywhere else in the world such events "would scarcely warrant recording in an official dispatch, but Angora [Ankara] is not other places". In 1929, Suritz negotiated and signed a secret alliance with Turkey.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, on 26 October 1933 Suritz hosted an elaborate party in Istanbul where the Soviet Black Sea Fleet sailed down the Bosporus, bringing the Defense Commissar, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov as the guest of honor. Suritz greeted Marshal Voroshilov as he landed in Istanbul while a 25-gun salute was fired in his honor. The reception of the Soviet delegation in Istanbul was described as friendly with large crowds cheering the visitors. Most notably, the wives and daughters of the Politburo members went along on the trip to Turkey "in great exception against Stalin's ban against junketing" as the correspondent of Time put it. Upon landing in Istanbul, the wives and daughters were taken away by "the svelte Mrs. Suritz" who had them all redressed in the latest styles of Paris as she felt that the Moscow fashions would make a terrible impression in Turkey. Afterwards, the Soviet party travelled on to Ankara where at a ball at the Soviet embassy hosted by Suritz and his wife with the guest of honor being President Kemal, the wives and daughters of the Soviet delegation were described being "having shone like Soviet Cinderellas".
Ambassador in Berlin In 1934, he was appointed as the Soviet ambassador to Germany. On 26 October 1934, Suritz arrived at the Reich Chancellery to present his credentials as the ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Adolf Hitler. Suritz had a difficult time in Berlin as a Jew and a Communist, and frequently had to invoke diplomatic immunity in his disputes with the German authorities. However, within the diplomatic community in Berlin, Suritz was well regarded as an intellectual who had a passion for collecting French Impressionist paintings. Suritz had a very close friendship with the American ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd, who like him was an intellectual turned diplomat. In his diary, Dodd wrote that Suritz was the "brightest of local diplomats" and "an impeccable gentleman in all respects". As Suritz spoke no English while Dodd spoke no Yiddish or Russian, the two talked in German, their common language. Dodd was a deeply unhappy man as he came to detest Nazi Germany, which ultimately led to his recall to the United States in 1937. Dodd came to lean on Suritz as one of the few fellow ambassadors whom he shared his feelings about his posting. Unknown to ambassador Dodd, his daughter Martha Dodd who had come with him to Berlin was recruited to work as a spy for the Soviet Union during her time in Berlin by one of her lovers, the Soviet diplomat Boris Vinogradov who served as the First Secretary at the Soviet embassy.
On 14 January 1935, Suritz wrote to the Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov that: "As you know, your German friend has told us that there has been powerful pressure from influential Reichswehr circles and those close to Schacht insisting on reconciliation and agreement with us. According to him, the biggest impression has been our preparedness to develop economic relations." Suritz did not name the "German friend" he was referring to. On 29 May 1935, Suritz reported to Litvinov that he had met the Reichsbank president Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, whom he described as being "very friendly and spoke about the necessity of an improvement in mutual relations".
On 28 November 1935, Suritz reported that he met a number of German officials, whom he listed as the Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath; the Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring; the War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg; and the Propaganda Minister Dr. Josef Goebbels. Suritz stated: "All my contacts with the Germans have only strengthened my earlier conviction that the course against us, which Hitler has embarked, will remain unchanged, and we cannot expect any serious alternations in the immediate future. All my interlocutors were unanimous in this respect. For an example, I was told that Hitler has three obsessions: hostility towards the Soviet Union (towards Communism), the Jewish Question and the Anschluss; hostility towards the Soviet Union flows not only from his ideological attitude towards Communism, but also constitutes the basis of his tactical line in foreign policy...I repeat that it's more obvious to me now than at any other time before that Hitler and his entourage will not voluntarily change their course as far as relations with us are concerned...There is nothing we can do but patiently and continue to strengthen and develop our economic ties. Strengthening of economic ties on the basis of Schacht's latest proposals suits both sides (this and only this explains the blessing given to Schacht by Hitler). Implementation of the new agreements will set interested commercial circles in motion and bring them closer to us. It will doubles strengthen our "base" in Germany and will make a turn in the political course easier when the present German leadership is forced to by subsequent events".