Viatcheslav Mikhaïlovitch Molotov

Biography

Viatcheslav Molotov was born the March 9th 1890 in Kukarka (nowadays Sovetsk) in Russia, it was registered with the democratic social working Parti of Russia (POSDR) in 1906 under the pseudonym of Molotov (of the Russian : molot (молот) hammer ), thus giving up its true Skriabine patronym. It was, with Alexandre Chliapnikov, oldest Bolchevik with Pétrograd at the time of the Révolution of February, whereas characters as Lénine was still in exile. After having supported a line of support to the provisional government, it ends up adopting the orientation of Lénine. He played a minor part in the Révolution of October and in the civil war, but was very appreciated as executant to whom one could entrust all the useful tasks.

Its rise within the party is explained by its total fidelity and its subordination to Joseph Stalin as of 1922.

From December 1930 with the May 9th 1941, he was President of the Council of the police chiefs of the people (Sovnarkom), which were the Presidency of the government of the Soviet Union, even if in practice this station were under the orders of the secretariat of the Communist party. Of 1928 with 1934, he is also supreme leader of the Komintern, although IIIe Internationale in the facts was directed according to the instructions of Stalin.

During the holidays of Stalin, Molotov remained in Moscow and directed in fact the Politburo and the USSR according to his directives. He was also second secretary of the Central committee just after Stalin, until in 1935. At the end of the years 1930, it formed part with Kaganovitch, Iejov and Kliment Vorochilov of the restricted group of five members which made in fact all the important decisions in company of Stalin. untiring Glutton for work, this bureaucrat was one of the chiefs of the planning of the Dékoulakisation, one of the organizers of the squadrons thrown on the campaigns (1930-1933). There did not hesitate to go in the famished Ukraine of the Holodomor to encourage the failing Communists to remain firm against the peasants revolted and decimated by the hunger.

During the Great Purgings of 1936 - 1939, as prove it the input registers of the the Kremlin now available, Molotov was leading Soviet generally received in the office of Stalin, before even the supreme leader of the police force Nikolaï Iejov. It never hid firmly to have supported the policy of the Great Terror, which leads to 680 000 executions in two years and with the sending of hundreds of thousands of innocent to the Gulag. Its signature appears at the sides of that of Stalin on very many lists of collective death sentences. Thus, the November 25th 1938, it contresigned with Stalin the death of 3 173 people, a record.

In its talks of the Years 1970 with the journalist Felix Tchouev, Molotov was without ambiguity: Stalin was the person in charge of Terror, and we who encouraged it, which were active, I was always active, always favorable so that measurements are taken .

He itself sometimes was however threatened by the repressive maelstrom: many its collaborator close relations were stopped and constrained by NKVD blaming their owner for whatever purpose it may serve. His Polina wife, member of the Central committee and minister, were highly blamed in 1939 for alleged embezzlements, and were excluded from the Central committee in 1940, whereas its Jewish origins made it awkward at the time of the Pacte germano-Soviet. In 1949, Polina was stopped and sent to the Gulag, from where it left only to dead Stalin.

The day before the Second world war, Molotov became Foreign Minister, while keeping his station in Sovnarkom, until Stalin included it in his functions. It is frequently advanced that its predecessor, Maxim Litvinov, had been isolated because of his judeity, not to displease with the Nazis at the time the signature of the Pact germano-Soviet of the August 23rd 1939, bearing on the division of the Poland and the annexation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union.

At the time of the defeat of Combined at the time of the Battle of France in 1940, Molotov addressed the “ cordial congratulations of the government soviétique ” with the German ambassador in Moscow for “ the splendid success of the armed forces allemandes ”. In a marked speech in November 1940, Molotov announced triumphantly that in one year, the USSR had increased by 500 000 km ² and of 23 million new inhabitants.

Like member of the Politburo, it continued to frequently approve the mass executions of the “ Enemy of the people ”. For example, the March 5th 1940, it signed like all the politburo the order to carry out (prepared by Lavrenti Beria) of the thousands of Polish prisoners, especially of the officers representing the intelligentsia and which is known like the Massacre of Katyń.

During discussions with Hitler, at the time of its meeting the November 12th 1940 before the release of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, where he explained why “ if it took stock of the situation created after the defeat of France, it would have to say that the German-Russian agreement was not without influence on the great victories allemandes ”, Molotov permanently annoyed his interlocutors with his insistence to keep, or to even improve, the interests of his country in Eastern Europe without being inattentive by promises on remote grounds like the India. When Ribbentrop discussed to divide the British Empire soon conquered, Molotov asked him why, if the the United Kingdom were dying man, their negotiations took place in an air-raid shelter. Later this inflexible attitude would cause many frustrations with the Allies.

It was useful as Foreign Minister until in 1949 and was then replaced by Andrei Vychinsky, then of 1953 with 1956.

After the death of Stalin in 1953, it was opposed to the denunciation by Nikita Khrouchtchev of the Stalinist crimes and tried with other partisans of the ultra-authoritative tendency, like Lazare Kaganovitch, a blow in the Communist party for évincer Khrouchtchev. When that failed, it let Khrouchtchev name it at increasingly unimportant stations, such as for example ambassador in Mongolia of 1957 with 1960, then deputy permanent Soviet near the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with Vienna of 1960 with 1961. In 1964 it was excluded from the party, that it could reinstate in 1984, but it was only one symbolic gesture.

He died the November 8th 1986 and was buried with the Cimetière of Novodevitchi to Moscow.

Family ties

Viatcheslav Molotov was the first cousin of the Russian type-setter Alexandre Scriabine (Скря́бин).

Anecdote

Famous the Kingpin, or bends with gasoline, was named by the soldiers of the Finnish army according to him in 1939, by derision.

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