Vyacheslav Molotov
- In full:
- Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov
- Original name:
- Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin
- Born:
- February 25 [March 9, New Style], 1890, Kukarka [now Sovetsk], Russia
- Political Affiliation:
- Bolshevik
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Vyacheslav Molotov (born February 25 [March 9, New Style], 1890, Kukarka [now Sovetsk], Russia—died November 8, 1986, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) was a statesman and diplomat who served as foreign minister and the major spokesman for the Soviet Union at Allied conferences during and immediately after World War II.
Early revolutionary activities and rise to power
A member and organizer of the Bolshevik party from 1906, Molotov was twice arrested (1909, 1915) for his revolutionary activities. After the Bolsheviks seized power (1917), Molotov worked in several provincial party organizations. In 1921 he became a member and a secretary of the Central Committee as well as a candidate member of the Politburo. He staunchly supported Joseph Stalin after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, and in December 1926 he was promoted to full membership in the Politburo. He then assumed control of the Moscow Party Committee and purged the Moscow organization of its anti-Stalin membership (1928–30). In 1930 he was made chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (i.e., prime minister of the Soviet Union), a post he held until 1941.
Foreign minister during World War II
In May 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Molotov was picked by Stalin to replace Maksim Litvinov as the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs. In this capacity he negotiated the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; August 1939) with Nazi Germany. In May 1941, when Stalin himself took over as chairman of the Council of Ministers (formerly Council of People’s Commissars), Molotov remained its first deputy chairman. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union (June 1941), he also served on the State Defense Committee (the special war cabinet). Molotov arranged the Soviet alliances with Great Britain and the United States and attended the Allies’ conferences at Tehrān (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945) as well as the San Francisco Conference (1945), which created the United Nations. In his wartime dealings with the Allies and afterward, he earned a reputation for uncompromising hostility to the West.
The Russo-Finnish War and the origin of the Molotov cocktail
After he became minister of foreign affairs, Molotov authorized the illegal Soviet invasion of Finland, thus starting the Russo-Finnish War in late 1939. Molotov, skilled in propaganda, referred to the cluster bombs dropped by the Soviets on Finland as “food parcels” for starving Finns. The Finnish resistance was stronger than the Soviet Union expected, and the invasion lasted through the winter and into March 1940, when the vastly outnumbered Finns agreed to a peace treaty. Finnish fighters used incendiary weapons made from bottles filled with a mixture of tar, ethanol, and gasoline and stoppered with wicks, and the Finns christened them “Molotov cocktails”—drinks intended to accompany Molotov’s “food parcels.” The popularity and effectiveness of the weapons led to the global adoption of the term Molotov cocktail.
Conflict with Khrushchev
In March 1949 Molotov gave up the post of foreign minister, but, after Stalin died in March 1953, he resumed it, holding it until his political disagreements with Nikita Khrushchev resulted in his dismissal in June 1956. He was made minister of state control in November, but, when he joined the “antiparty group” that unsuccessfully tried to depose Khrushchev in June 1957, he lost all his high party and state offices.
Molotov subsequently served as ambassador to Mongolia and as the Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna (1960–61). In 1962, after engaging in more criticisms of Khrushchev, he was expelled from the Communist Party. He lived thereafter in undisturbed retirement in Moscow.