Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich

MOLOTOV, VYACHESLAV MIKHAILOVICH

(1880–1986), Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician, often regarded as Stalin's chief lieutenant.

Vyacheslav Molotov was born at Kukarka, Nolinsk district, Vyatka province, on March 9, 1880. His father was the manager of the village store. Molotov's real name was Skryabin; he was the second cousin of the composer and pianist Alexander Skryabin (1872–1915). After attending the village school, he was educated at Kazan Real School from 1902, and became involved in the 1905 Revolution in Nolinsk district, joining the Bolshevik Party in 1906. Engaged in revolutionary agitation in Kazan, particularly among student groups, he was arrested in 1909 and exiled to Vologda province.

In 1911, at the end of his period of exile, he enrolled first in the shipbuilding department but soon transferred to the economics department at St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. He continued his revolutionary agitation, again especially among student groups, and from 1912 was involved in the production of the early numbers of Pravda, to which he contributed a number of articles. It was at this time he first called himself Molotov (from the word for "hammer") after the hero in Nikolai Pomyalovsky's 1861 novel. In 1915, having been sent by the party to Moscow, he was again arrested and exiled to Irkutsk province, but escaped in 1916. Returning to St. Petersburg to continue his revolutionary activity, he was one of the leading Bolsheviks there in March 1917. He was prominent during the early weeks of the Russian Revolution, again working for Pravda and serving on the St. Petersburg Soviet, but retired into the background with the return of Lenin and other senior leaders from exile.

Molotov was involved but did not play a leading part in the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917. In March 1918 Molotov became chairman of the Sovnarkhoz (Economic Council) for the northern provinces, thus assuming responsibility for economic affairs in the Petrograd area. In 1919, during the civil war, he was in command of a river steamer charged with spreading Bolshevik propaganda in provinces newly liberated from the White armies. He then spent short spells as a party representative in Nizhny Novgorod and the Donbass.

Molotov now rapidly rose in the Bolshevik party. He was elected to the Central Committee in 1921, was first secretary from 1921 to 1922, preceding Josef Stalin's appointment as General Secretary, and continued to work in the Secretariat until 1930, having become a full member of the Politburo in 1926. During this period he became associated with Stalin, fully supporting him in his struggles against the opposition and becoming Stalin's chief agent in agricultural policy, particularly collectivization.

In December 1930, Molotov became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom ), a post sometimes regarded as equivalent to prime minister, where he was responsible for the implementation of a planned economy and Stalinist industrialization and related economic and social polices. During the later 1930s he was fully identified with the Stalinist repressions, and for a short time in 1936 he was personally in danger for committing Stalin too openly to a pro-German foreign policy.

From May 1939 until 1949 Molotov was foreign minister. In August 1939 he was responsible for negotiating the notorious Nazi-Soviet pact. In May 1941, shortly before the outbreak of war, Stalin replaced him as Sovnarkom chairman. Molotov remained as vice-chairman, and during the war he was also deputy chairman of the State Defence Committee (GKO) with special responsibility for tank production, as well as foreign minister. He was responsible for negotiating the wartime alliance with the United States and Great Britain in 1942; with Stalin he represented the USSR at the major wartime international conferences. He then headed the Soviet delegation to the San Francisco conference of 1945 that established the United Nations organization. Representing the USSR at the United Nations and at postwar foreign ministers' conferences until his dismissal as foreign minister in 1949, he earned a reputation as a blunt, determined, and vociferous opponent of Western policies.

After Stalin's death, Molotov was again foreign minister, from 1953 to 1956, but his relations with Khrushchev were never good, and he was dismissed from his important government offices as a leader of the Antiparty Group in 1957. He then served as Soviet ambassador to Mongolia from 1957 to 1960, and as USSR representative to the International Atomic Energy Commission in 1960 and 1961.

Expelled from the Communist Party in 1962, Molotov lived in retirement until his death in 1986. He was reinstated in the party in 1984. His wife, Polina Semenova (also known as Zhemchuzhina), whom he had married in 1921 and with whom he had two children, also achieved high party and government positions but was incarcerated from 1949 to 1953. Molotov admitted that he had voted in the Politburo for her arrest.

See also: anti-party group; bolshevism; khrushchev, nikita sergeyevich; nazi-soviet pact of 1939; revolution of 1917; sovnarkom; stalin, josef vissarionovich

bibliography

Chuev, Felix. (1993). Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics, ed. Albert Resis. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

Watson, Derek. (1996). Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930–41. Basingstoke, UK: CREES-Macmillan.

Watson, Derek. (2002). "Molotov, the Making of the Grand Alliance and the Second Front, 1939–1942." Europe-Asia Studies 54 (1):51–86.

Derek Watson