Adolph Abramovich Joffe (, alternative transliterations Adol'f Ioffe or, rarely, Yoffe) (10 October 1883 in Simferopol – 16 November 1927 in Moscow) was a Russian revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaite descent. Biography Revolutionary career Adolf Abramovich Joffe was born in Simferopol, Crimea, Russian Empire in a wealthy Karaite family. He became a social democrat in 1900 while still in high school, formally joining the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903. In 1904 Joffe was sent to Baku, which he had to flee to avoid arrest. He was then sent to Moscow, but had to flee again, this time abroad. After the events of Bloody Sunday on 9 January 1905, Joffe returned to Russia and took an active part in the Russian Revolution of 1905. In early 1906 he was forced to emigrate and lived in Berlin until his expulsion from Germany in May 1906. In Russia, Joffe was close to the Menshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Party. However, after moving to Vienna in May 1906, he became close to Leon Trotsky's position and helped Trotsky edit Pravda from 1908 to 1912 while studying medicine and psychoanalysis with Alfred Adler. He also used his family's fortune to support Pravda financially. During the course of his underground revolutionary activity Joffe adopted the party name "V. Krymsky," the surname meaning "The Crimean." In 1912 Joffe was arrested while visiting Odessa, imprisoned for 10 months and then exiled to Siberia. 1917 Revolution In 1917, Joffe, freed from the Siberian exile by the February Revolution, returned to the Crimea. Crimean social democrats sent him to the capital, Petrograd, to represent them, but he soon moved to an internationalist revolutionary position, which made it impossible for him to remain in an organization dominated by less radical Mensheviks. Instead, he joined forces with Trotsky, who had just returned from abroad. In May 1917, Joffe and Trotsky temporarily joined Mezhraiontsy who merged with the Bolsheviks at the VI Bolshevik Party Congress held between 26 July and 3 August 1917 (all dates are Old Style until February 1918). At the Congress, Joffe was elected a candidate (non-voting) member of the Central Committee, but two days later, on 5 August, the Central Committee, some of whose members were in prison, in hiding or lived far from Petrograd and could not attend its meetings, made Joffe a member of its permanent ("narrow") bureau.