Jacob M. Lomakin

Jacob Lomakin died August 16, 1958 and was buried at the Moscow Novodevichy cemetery.

1956–1958, Moscow, Counselor of the Department of International Organizations, USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs

1953–1956, Beijing, Minister Counselor of the USSR Embassy

1949–1953, Deputy Head Department of Foreign Policy, CPSU Central Committee

At UN sessions, Lomakin opposed the incitement of hostility between the USSR and its WWII Allies, which, he said, day after day manifested itself in various forms in print and radio, and offered to focus on eradicating the consequences of fascism. He pointed out that if the media picks up and replicates the same version, then this lack of alternative is in itself censorship. Lomakin warned about the unlawful incitement of hatred. He insisted that journalists should be held accountable for the information they bring to the court of readers and listeners. According to him, “if the media is given too much freedom, they start trading news, as selling tobacco, thinking only about making the most profit.” In August 1948 the truthfulness of this remark came to life during the Kasenkina Case.

According to Ellis M. Zacharias (a retired Rear Admiral and senior Intelligence Officer of the US Navy) the personal tragedy of a mentally unstable Soviet school teacher, Oksana Kasenkina “was immensely overheated by the mass media into a noisy and ambiguous affair.” Her erratic behavior at the time of McCarthyism and the Berlin blockade “was promptly used as a welcome opportunity for effective anti-Soviet propaganda... It was Mme Kasenkina whose fears and indecisions precipitated the crisis.” On July 31, 1948, she deserted her Soviet employers on the eve of her projected departure for Moscow. Vladimir Zenzinov, a former member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party brought her to Reed Farm belonging to the Tolstoy Foundation. Countess Alexandra Tolstoy provided her shelter and a job. She worked in the kitchen serving farm workers, many of whom were previously active in the White Movement.

On August 8, 1948, articles detailing the conference as “Red vs White woman “kidnapping” were printed in the Internationally circulated New York newspapers. Karl E. Mundt the representative of the House Un-American Activities Committee wanted to quiz the Soviet teacher as a link to spy case. “She must be trusted by the Russians because she had been selected to teach Russian children - “a job given only to people they can trust”. The following days the press and radio accused Lomakin of forcibly kidnapping Kasenkina and the letter was called a fake. Day and night the Consulate building on East 61st street was surrounded by reporters and anti-communists. On Aug.12, 1948 the New York State Supreme Court Justice Samuel Dickstein approved a habeas corpus, requiring Lomakin to produce the teacher to court. Paradoxically, in 1999 declassified Soviet files revealed that Dickstein, a former Democratic Congressmen, also known as the "father of McCarthyism", for many years was a paid spy for Soviet Secret Service NKVD. Lomakin refused, saying the teacher is sick.

On August 19, 1948, the Department of State requested the President to revoke the exequatur issued to Consul General Lomakin. The same day President Truman approved the decision of the State Department. Consul General Lomakin was declared persona non grata on the grounds that he kidnapped a woman and held her in custody. The Kasenkina Case coincided in time with the neck-to-neck presidential campaign of President Harry Truman and New York Governor Thomas Dewey. The revoke of the exequatur came long before the State Department received translation of Kasenkina's letter and ahead of FBI graphology expertise that confirmed her handwriting. Walter Bedell Smith, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote of the negative impact the Kasenkina case had on the settlement of the Berlin Blockade. Cancellation of a high-ranking diplomat exequatur is rare and is always seen as a blow to the prestige of the country. In retaliation the Government of the USSR ended negotiations on lifting the Berlin Blockade, and closed its consulates in New York and San Francisco. According to Ellis M. Zacharias: “at the moment of Lomakin’s expulsion we lost the initiative to the Russians… became deprived of the major diplomatic listening post at the far end of the gigantic Soviet Empire... let the Berlin negotiations end in disagreement… a failure that was to cost us millions of dollars spent on the airlift.” He considered Lomakin as “a positive factor in Russo-American relations, one in a rapidly diminishing group of pro-American Soviet officials left behind from the short term of Maxim Litvinov in Washington. It was, therefore, both ill timed and ill advised to pick on Lomakin and to hand him his passport in a nebulous diplomatic fracas whose propaganda value had already been skillfully exploited." The USSR-US consular relations were restored only 24 years later, in 1972. On August 26, 1948, it was admitted: “Lomakin still a member of U.N. Sub-Group. Ousted Consul might claim immunity accorded to U.N. personnel to return here. On August 27, 1948 Jacob Lomakin with wife and two children boarded steamliner “Stockholm” and left the United States. The tickets were booked for a planned vacation six weeks before the Kasenkina case became an International incident.

1948–1949, Deputy Head of Press Department, USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs

In 1946-1948 Lomakin combines the duties of Consul General in New York City with work at the United Nations (UN) subcommittee on Freedom of Information and the Press. "Mr. Lomakin was elected as an individual - rather than a member of the Soviet delegation by the Economic and Social Council. Members were to be chosen by the Human Rights Commission, in consultation with the Secretary General Trygve Lie." “Lomakin’s election confirms that his erudition in economics and journalism was widely known.” “A near-facsimile of cinemanful James Cagney, ebullient Consul Lomakin had no battery of deadpan advisers... Unlike icily aloof Andrei Gromyko, Lomakin chatted easily with whose near him. He called the other delegates “fellow experts” and he uttered such un-Soviet statements as “We don’t need to be consulting Moscow all the time,” and ”I will go along with what the majority thinks. …(when) the subcommission promptly voted - nine against Lomakin - to put censorship problem on the agenda. They seemed almost sorry to do it; he was such an agreeable Russian.” “Lomakin looks like a member of the Notre Dame backfield and talks like Sir George Bernard Shaw.”

In 1939 the graduate of the Moscow Textile Institute (with expertise in engineering and economics) and editor of newspaper “Light Industry” was appointed as TASS journalist in New York City. The eruption of WWII initiated Lomakin's diplomatic career: in 1941 as Vice-Consul in NYC and in 1942-1944 as Consul General in San Francisco.

Jacob Mironovich Lomakin (Russian: Яков Миронович Ломакин; November 4, 1904 – August 16, 1958) was a Soviet diplomat, journalist and economist.