World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was born in the village of Kukarka to Mr. Skryabin, a shop clerk. He was educated at a secondary school in Kazan, and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1906. For his political work he took the pseudonym Molotov (from the Russian word for hammer, molot). He was arrested in 1909 and spent two years in exile in Siberia. In 1911 he enrolled at the St Petersburg Polytechnic, and also joined the editorial staff of Pravda, the underground Bolshevik newspaper, of which Joseph Stalin was editor. In 1913 he was again arrested and deported to Irkutsk, but in 1915 he escaped and returned to the capital.

ww2dbaseIn 1916 Molotov became a member of Bolshevik Party's committee in Petrograd, and when the February Revolution broke out in 1917 he was one of the few Bolsheviks of any standing in the capital. As a protégé of Stalin, he became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee which was responsible for the October Revolution that pushed Stalin to power. In 1918 Molotov was sent to Ukraine during its civil war, but did little fighting. In 1920 he was recalled to Russia by Stalin to become a member of the party secretariat. In 1921 he became a member of the Central Committee, and in 1926 a member of the Politburo. After Vladmir Lenin's death, Molotov was a stern supporter of Stalin in the subsequent power struggle. In Dec 1930, he became Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, in which role he oversaw the collectivization of agriculture that eventually led to millions of resistant land-owning peasants to labor camps. His Extraordinary Commission for Grain Delivery in Ukraine seized grain from the peasants and eventually caused a famine. Over four million people died as a result of Molotov's collectivization efforts. While his agricultural policies were disastrous, his industrial policies fared better. His first Five-Year Plan brought Russian's industrial capability closer to those of Russia's neighbors to the west. During the Great Purge that lasted from 1935 to 1938, Molotov often signed death warrants against Stalin's political enemies. In 1938, American journalist John Gunther wrote:

ww2dbaseIn May 1939, Stalin decided Russia needed to establish friendly relations with Germany to avoid confrontation with Adolf Hitler's expansionist policies. Stalin removed Maxim Litvinov, a man of Jewish faith, from the position of foreign minister, and installed Molotov instead. On 19 Aug 1939, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop visited Moscow. On 24 Aug 1939, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. On the surface, the pact was a ten-year agreement between the two nations to maintain a peaceful status quo, and should conflict arise neutral arbitration was to be employed instead of any act of war. However, within this document was a hidden protocol that would not be revealed until the German defeat in 1945. This hidden protocol detailed the division of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania under each nation's sphere of influence. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact kept Russia and Germany at a fragile peace until Jun 1941 when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Following the German invasion, Molotov visited London in 1941 and Washington in 1942, gathering western support against Germany. In 1942 he signed the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Alliance with Britain and the United States. In the subsequent years, he accompanied Stalin to the major conferences with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. He also attended the San Francisco Conference that created the United Nations.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, Molotov survived a renewed purge by Stalin, but fell from his favor. At the 19th Party Congress in 1952, Molotov was elected to the new, expanded Presidium of the Communist Party, but was excluded from the smaller standing committee of the Presidium. After Stalin's death in 1953, Molotov's political position was strengthened once again as he regained the position of Foreign Minister. In this position he made attempts to re-establish relations with Josip Tito's government in Yugoslavia and attended the Geneva Conference of 1955. His political position was challenged once again after Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power. Molotov became the leader of Russian leaders who served under Stalin and were now being attacked by Khrushchev. In Jun 1956, Molotov was removed from his position in the Foreign Ministry, and in Jul 1957 he was denounced by Khrushchev. He was given the position of ambassador to Mongolia so that he was removed from Moscow. In 1960 he was appointed to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 1961, as a result of the 22nd Party Congress, he was relieved of all his responsibilities and kicked out of the Communist Party. In Mar 1962 he officially announced his retirement from politics. He was allowed to rejoin the party in 1984.

ww2dbaseMolotov died in Moscow in 1986. He now rests in peace at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

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1.  Alan Chanter says:
4 Oct 2014 07:38:34 AM

Vyacheslav Molotov was a stolid, widely read, rather puritanical man who dressed more conventionally than the rest of the Bolshevik leadership in suit and tie, with little sense of humour and a habit of speaking remorselessly and at length in order to secure his point of view, for which he was rewarded with the less flattering epithet 'stone-arse'.