MILSHTEIN, SOLOMON RAFAILOVICH (1899–1955). An im-
portant member of Lavrenty Beria’s political machine, Milshtein
served in the Communist Partyin Georgia, and then in Moscow in
the NKVD. Milshtein was Beria’s satrap in a number of critical posts
in the security service in Moscow and the provinces. He was repeat-
edly decorated, and he was made a lieutenant general in 1945. He
was serving as deputy chief of the Ukrainian MGBwhen Beria fell.
He was arrested in June 1953, tried on 30 October 1954, and shot two
days later.MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Initially, the Bolshevik
Partysaw little need for diplomacy. The first commissar of foreign
affairs, Leon Trotsky, believed that the 1917 Revolutionhad made
traditional diplomacy obsolete, and that it would set off a series of
European revolutions. “I’ll just publish some memorandum, and
shut up shop,” he reportedly said. The Commissariat of Foreign Af-
fairs was until 1939 the weakest of three foreign policy institutions:
the security service and the Comintern had far greater authority in
the Kremlin. With the appointment of Vyacheslav Molotovto the
post in 1939, this changed. Molotov had Joseph Stalin’s ear, and
the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, which after 1946 was the Min-
istry of Foreign Affairs, increasingly became a center of foreign
policy decision making until Stalin’s death. Under Molotov, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs became a major consumer of foreign in-
telligence, and he placed heavy demands on intelligence officers for
foreign documents and agent reports. In 1947 Molotov, as head of
the Committee of Information, or Komitet Informatsii, had control
of foreign intelligence.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs grew in authority after 1953 as the
Soviet Union became a major power. While it still had to compete
with the KGBand the International Department of the Communist
PartyCentral Committee (CPCC), it did so after 1953 as more of an
equal. Longtime Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko and
Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin played a far more
important role in U.S.-Soviet relations than their colleagues in the in-
telligence service or the CPCC.
Problems between the KGB rezidentand the ambassador appar-
ently plagued many embassies as they competed to provide MoscowMINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS • 16106-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 161