USPD. Diplomatic career In 1919–1920, Joffe was a member of the Council of Labor and Defense and People's Commissar (minister) of State Control of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. He was not re-elected to the Central Committee at the VIII Party Congress in March 1919 and would never again occupy a major leadership position. He negotiated a ceasefire with Poland in October 1920 and peace treaties with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in late 1920. In 1921 he signed the Peace of Riga with Poland, ending the Polish-Soviet War of 1918-1921, and was made deputy chairman of the Turkestan Commission of the VTsIK and Sovnarkom. Joffe was one of the Soviet delegates at the Genoa Conference in February 1922, an experience he described in a short book published later that same year. After the Soviet walkout, he was made ambassador to China (in office: 1922 to 1923 or 1924), as the Soviet troubleshooter (or Kuznetsov) of those days. In 1923, Joffe signed an agreement with Sun Yat-Sen in Shanghai on aid to the Kuomintang on the assumption that the latter would cooperate with Chinese Communists, presumably with Lenin's approval. While based in China, Joffe traveled to Japan in June 1923 to settle Soviet-Japanese relations. The negotiations proved long and difficult, and ended when Joffe became gravely ill and had to be sent back to Moscow. After a partial recovery, he served as a member of the Soviet delegation to Great Britain in 1924 and as Soviet representative in Austria in 1924–1926. In 1926 his declining health and disagreements with the ruling Bolshevik faction forced his semi-retirement. He tried to concentrate on teaching, but it also proved difficult due to his ill-health. Opposition and suicide Joffe remained a friend and loyal supporter of Leon Trotsky through the 1920s, joining him in the Left Opposition. By late 1927, he was gravely ill, in extreme pain and confined to his bed. After a refusal by the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party to send him abroad for treatment and Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party on 12 November 1927, he committed suicide on 16 November. He left a farewell letter addressed to Trotsky, but the letter was seized by Soviet secret police agents and later quoted by Stalinists to discredit both Joffe and Trotsky. Trotsky's eulogy at Joffe's funeral was his last public speech in the Soviet Union. Joffe's wife Maria Joffe was arrested as