Sergei Sazonov

Born July 29 (Aug. 10), 1860; died Dec. 25, 1927. Russian state figure and diplomat.

Sazonov was the son of a member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry) of Riazan’ province. He entered the diplomatic service in 1883. From September 1910 to July 1916 he was minister of foreign affairs. He continued a policy of rapprochement with Great Britain and Japan. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to unite the Balkan states and Turkey in a confederation against Austria-Hungary under the aegis of Russia. He conducted negotiations with Germany, which culminated in the Potsdam Agreement of 1911, and he concluded agreements with Japan in 1912 and 1916. In the years 1914–16, during World War I, he carried on negotiations with Great Britain and France on matters of wartime cooperation and on the terms of the future peace. In the period 1918–20, Sazonov was a member of the White Guard governments of Kolchak and Denikin. He represented the White Guards at the Paris Peace Conference, where he sought to broaden the intervention against Soviet Russia. He died in emigration, in Nice.