Dr. Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov, 1916-1998

Dr. Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov died on Friday, November 20 in Southern
California.

Berezhkov led a distinguished and fascinating career as an interpreter,diplomat, journalist, and scholar. Born in St. Petersburg on July 2, 1916, Berezhkov graduated from Kiev University in 1938. After serving in the Soviet Pacific Fleet in 1938-39, he was recruited by the Soviet Foreign Ministry because of his German and English language skills–commodities in short supply due to Stalin’s purges of the Ministry’s ranks. In November 1940 he served as interpreter at the Molotov-Hitler and von Ribbentrop
talks in Berlin. From December 1940 to June 22, 1941 he was First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Germany, and was present with Soviet Ambassador Dekanasov at Ribbentrop’s declaration of war against the USSR. Returning to Moscow in July 1941, he was appointed to the Foreign Ministry as Assistant to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov for Soviet-American Relations.
In this capacity he served as personal interpreter to Stalin and Molotov and participated in wartime conferences of the three leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition–Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.

After the war, in 1945, Berezhkov turned to journalism and was appointed Deputy Chief Editor of the Soviet weekly New Times. In 1969 he started a new Soviet monthly journal, USA-Economics, Politics, Ideology and was its Chief Editor until 1989. From 1978 to 1983, he served in the Soviet Embassy in Washington as First Secretary, representing the Institute of USA and Canada Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Berezhkov received a doctorate from the Institute of USA and Canada Studies in 1974 and taught at Moscow State University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, as well as at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Claremont Colleges, and Occidental College. He was the author of many articles and seven books with a circulation in Russian and English of over two million copies. His publications include Diplomatic Mission to Hitler (1965), The Tehran Conference (1969), The Anti-Hitler Coalition (1972), Road to Potsdam (1978), History in the Making (1983), Lessons of Diplomatic History (1986), and I Was Stalin’s Interpreter (1991). The latter volume, first issued in German, and then Russian, was published in the United States in 1994 as At Stalin’s Side.

Valentin Berezhkov was witness to and interpreter of many of the major events of the 20th century. For those who knew him well, however, he was first and foremost an exceptionally compassionate individual whose warmth and humor transcended the history-making developments to which he was a
part.