Vyacheslav molotov and stalin biography

Vyacheslav Molotov was born on March 9, 1890, in the remote village of Kukarka, Russia. He managed to rise from a Marxist member of the Bolshevik Party in the mid-1900s to one of the most influential Soviet politicians and diplomats. In 1921, by eagerly supporting Joseph Stalin’s struggle for leadership after Vladimir Lenin’s death, Molotov acquired the post of Secretary of the Central Committee and became a member of the Politburo in 1926. Molotov became the Commissar of Foreign Affairs in 1939 and played a pivotal role in Allied Forces conferences during and after World War II. After World War II, Molotov actively engaged in a diplomatic gamble to place the Eastern European countries under the Soviet Union’s influence and to counterbalance the United States’ aid in rebuilding Europe by proposing the Molotov Plan. After Stalin’s death, Molotov’s political career ended due to his criticism of a new leader, Nikita Khrushchev.

1. Vyacheslav Molotov’s Path from a Remote Village to the Politburo

Born to a merchant family, young Vyacheslav Molotov was described as shy and quiet. He graduated from a secondary school in Kazan, Russia, where he became familiar with Marxist revolutionary ideas. In 1906, Molotov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and his political career quickly advanced. As a “professional revolutionary,” Molotov was arrested several times by the Tsarist regime, which exiled him to Eastern Siberia. Molotov escaped, returned to Moscow, became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and took an active part in planning the Bolshevik October Revolution.

During this time, he met with Joseph Stalin and became his loyal supporter during the power struggle after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. When Stalin became General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party, he appointed Molotov a full member of the Politburo in January 1926.

Born February 25, 1890
Kukarka, Nolinsk region,
Vyatka province, Russia
Died November 8, 1986
Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union

Soviet revolutionary,
politician, and statesman

V yacheslav Molotov was the closest friend and loyal aide of Joseph Stalin (1879–1953; see entry) throughout Stalin's reign as leader of the Soviet Union. Won over to communism as a teenager, Molotov never strayed from the strict party line and always viewed Stalin's policies, however terror-filled, as correct. Molotov's talks with Western powers in the years following World War II (1939–45) helped fuel the Cold War (1945–91). The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union, falling just short of military conflict.

Young revolutionary

Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Scriabin was born to middle-class parents in the small central Russian town of Kukarka. Around 1912, he adopted his revolutionary surname "Molotov," which means hammer. Molotov was related to Russian composer Aleksandr Nikolaevich Scriabin and as a youngster studied the violin. During this time, the tsars, Russia's monarchy, ruled the country harshly, decreasing local rule and appointing aristocrats to administer over the industrial workers and peasants. This led to poor working conditions, greater poverty and hunger, and growing discontent among the citizens. As Molotov's family became more interested and involved in the peasant and worker unrest in the early and mid-1900s, he decided to forgo study in music for a more practical education. He attended high school in the nearby city of Kazan. There, Molotov was introduced to the ideas of German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), considered the father of communism. Communism is a system of government, where a single party, the Communist Party, controls all aspects of people's lives. In economic theory, it prohibits private ownership of property and business, so that goods produced

By Blaine Taylor

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Compared to the whirlwind visit of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Moscow on August 23, 1939, which resulted in the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, there was little gaiety at the Anhalter railroad station that day.

Grim-faced, the bullet-headed, stammering little man with the glinting pince-nez perched on his nose reviewed a German Army honor guard with von Ribbentrop and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, both of whom he would live to see hanged six years later at Nuremberg.

“Mediocrity Incarnate”

The man whose last name alias meant “hammer” in Russian to Stalin’s own “steel” and for whom the facetious Finns named their anti-armor gasoline bomb in the famed Winter War of 1939-1940 had been sent to Berlin to make demands of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. What did the Führer mean to do in Eastern Europe opposite the new Soviet frontier with Nazi Germany? What would be the place of the Soviet Union in the Axis Pact? There were more demands, too.

According to an eyewitness, German Foreign Office interpreter Dr. Paul Schmidt, “Little time was wasted on formalities…. The representatives of Germany and Soviet Russia went for hard, expert boxing…. The questions hailed down upon Hitler. No foreign visitor had ever spoken to him in this way in my presence…. Hitler did not jump up and rush for the door…. He was meekly polite….”

Later, when the two delegations had to retreat famously to an air raid shelter during a British Royal Air Force attack, Molotov sarcastically ridiculed von Ribbentrop’s assertion that Great Britain had already lost World War II and was as good as finished: “If that is so, then why are we in this shelter, and whose are those bombs that are falling on us?”

It was, indeed, this fateful state vi

Soviet politician and diplomat (1890–1986)

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Mikhaylovich and the family name is Molotov.

Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (né Skryabin; 9 March [O. S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the S