Mikhail Smirnovsky

Mikhail Nikolayevich Smirnovsky was a Soviet diplomat and a specialist in Soviet relations with English-speaking countries. He was first secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC in 1953, and served a second time in Washington as the minister-counselor and second-ranking officer of the Embassy at the beginning of the 1960s. Around 1963 Smirnovsky returned to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, where he was chief of the USA section of the Ministry. In 1966 he became Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom, where he served until around 1972. It is believed that he was later, in Moscow, a member of the Foreign Ministry's Collegium, understood to have been an advisory group of senior officers. He was a player in US-Soviet relations at critical times, including the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Smirnovsky was viewed by American colleagues as an efficient, businesslike diplomat who, in contrast to many other Soviet officials, eschewed rudeness and avoided unnecessary exaggeration.