Harriman, Averell

Born into the family of railroad tycoon Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell. He studied at the Groton school in Massachusetts, and then at Yale , where he joined the Skull and Bones Closed Society.

In 1909, he and his brother received a huge inheritance. In 1911, the Harriman brothers founded the Harriman Brothers & Co. banking house, which in 1931 received the name Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. after merging with another major New York bank . In 1918-1927 - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Union Pacific Railroad . In 1925-1928 he was one of the owners of the manganese concession in the Georgian SSR .

Harriman began his political activity in the Republican Party in the 1920s, but in 1928 he joined the Democratic Party . For a long time he was an adviser to US President Roosevelt in financial and industrial matters. In 1937-1939 - Chairman of the Advisory Committee of Entrepreneurs at the US Department of Commerce .

In March 1941 , in London, he participated in negotiations on Lend-Lease . In September 1941, at the rank of ambassador, he led the US delegation at the Moscow meeting of the USSR, USA and the British Empire . In 1941-1943, he was the Special Representative of the US President in Great Britain and the USSR . He was responsible for inter-alliance on Lend-Lease . In the years 1943-1946 - US ambassador to the USSR, during this period he often met with Stalin

He participated in the Tehran , Yalta and Potsdam conferences. On April 6, 1945, Harriman wrote to Roosevelt, impressed by the results of the Yalta Conference, that one of the main directions of Soviet foreign policy was to penetrate other countries by undermining the democratic processes with the help of local communist parties and taking advantage of the economic difficulties of these countries: “You should be clear about that the Soviet program is to establish totalitarianism, the elimination of personal freedoms and democracy, as we see and respect them ” ^[1] .

In August 1945, a delegation of Soviet pioneers presented Harriman with a sign of friendship with the USSR ally in World War II - a US state emblem carved from wood, in which the so-called passive listening device . This gift was placed in the Harriman’s embassy office and hung there until 1952 (when D.F. Kennan was already the ambassador), while his broadcast was completely accidentally intercepted by a radio operator of the English embassy. ^[2]

In 1946, the US ambassador to Great Britain. In the years 1946-1948, the US Secretary of Commerce . O. A. Troyanovsky recalled that in 1947 Stalin remarked about Harriman that “this person bears his share of responsibility for the deterioration of our relations after the death of Roosevelt” ^{[3] [4]} . In the years 1948-1950 - coordinator of the Marshall Plan . In 1950-1951, he was President Truman ’s Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs, a mediator between Iran and the British Empire on the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum ).

In 1954-1958 - Governor of the State of New York .

In 1961 and in 1965-1969 he was ambassador on special missions, in 1963-1965 he was the US Under Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. From May 1968 to January 1969, he led the US delegation in peace talks with representatives of North Vietnam in Paris .

• The first wife - Kitty Lanier Lawrence (? -1936), married her in 1915, and divorced in 1929 ^[5] .
  • Daughter - Mary Averell (Mary Averell Harriman, 1917-1996), married to Dr. Shirley S. Fisk ^[6]
  • Daughter - Kathleen (Kathleen Harriman, 1917–2011), joined her father in Moscow, learned Russian, participated in the Yalta Conference ^[5] , married to Stanley Grefton Mortimer Ml. (1913-1999), ^[7] who was previously married to the socialite Bebe Palei (1915-1978) ^[8]
• The second wife is Mary Norton Whitney (1903-1970), who left her husband Cornelius Vanderbild Whitney to marry Harriman in 1930.
• The third wife (since 1971) is Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward (1920-1997), the former wife of Winston Churchill's son Randolph , and the widow of Broadway producer Leland Hayward .

In 1982, the Russian Institute at Columbia University was renamed the Harriman Institute (1982-1992 W. Averell Harriman Institute for the Advanced Study of the Soviet Union , since 1992 Harriman Institute ).

• Harriman WA America and Russia in a changing world: A half century of personal observation. - 1971.
• Harriman WA Public papers of Averell Harriman, fifty-second governor of the state of New York, 1955-1959. - 1960.
• Harriman WA, Abel E. Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946. - 1975 .-- 595 p.

• Dunne D. Part 5. W. Averell Harriman: 1943-1946 // Between Roosevelt and Stalin. American Ambassadors in Moscow / Transl.: M. Grebnev. - M .: Three squares, 2004 .-- S. 299-388. - 470 s.
• Ivanyan E.A. Encyclopedia of Russian-American Relations. XVIII-XX centuries. - Moscow: International Relations, 2001. - 696 p. - ISBN 5-7133-1045-0 .