Politekhnicheskaya Ulitsa, 29, St Petersburg, Russia, 195251
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University where Vyacheslav Molotov studied from 1911 to 1916.
Career
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1939
Moscow, Russia
Russian Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signing the German-Soviet non-aggression pact in Moscow in1939.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1942
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1945
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Soviet politician and diplomat, at his desk, answering press questions at the Soviet Embassy on October 3, 1945.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1945
Potsdam, Germany
Russia's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, Honorable Ernest Bevin, Britain's Foreign Minister, United States Secretary of State James Byrnes, Great Britain Prime Minister Clement Attlee, United States President Harry S. Truman, and Russian Marshal Josef Stalin in Potsdam on August 10, 1945.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1945
King Charles St, Whitehall, Westminster, London SW1A 2AH, United Kingdom
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov leaves the Foreign Office in London with British politician Ernest Bevin, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Soviet diplomat Fedor Tarasovich Gusev after a meeting on September 11, 1945.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1946
Moscow, Russia
Vyacheslav Molotov, Josef Stalin and Russian and Soviet politicians march together at the funeral of Soviet Head of State, Mikhail Kalinin in Moscow on June 3, 1946.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1946
Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav M. Molotov, shakes hands with Eleanor Roosevelt.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1946
15 Rue de Vaugirard, 75291 Paris, France
Vyacheslav Molotov, head of the Soviet delegation, giving a speech at the rostrum of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris in 1946.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1947
Vyacheslav Molotov and George C. Marshall
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1947
15 Rue de Vaugirard, 75291 Paris, France
Vyacheslav Molotov, head of the Soviet delegation, leaving the Luxembourg Palace in Paris on June 27, 1947.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, and Ambassador Andrei Gromyko attend the United Nations assembly.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
Soviet Minister for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and Soviet economist and politician Nicolas Boukharine
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
Moscow, Russia, 103132
Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, makes a speech at the Kremlin in Moscow, circa 1940.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov and Josef Stalin
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1955
Geneva, Switzerland
Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov at the Geneva Summit discussing issues about security, German reunification, and disarmament on July 18, 1955.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1961
Reisnerstraße 45-47, 1030 Wien, Austria
Vyacheslav Molotov leaving the Soviet embassy after a 15-minute visit to Vienna, Austria on November 3, 1961.
Gallery of Vyacheslav Molotov
1928
Moscow, Russia
Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin, and Mikhail Kalinin, at the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks 16th conference in Moscow.
Achievements
1953
Vyacheslav Molotov on the cover of Time Magazine on April 20, 1953
Membership
Awards
Hero of Socialist Labour
The medal of the Hero of Socialist Labour that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded on September 30, 1943.
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded on March 8, 1940, September 30, 1943, November 5, 1945, and March 8, 1950.
Order of the October Revolution
The Order of the October Revolution that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Order of the Badge of Honour
The Order of the Badge of Honour that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded on October 10, 1954.
Medal "For the Defence of Moscow"
The Medal "For the Defence of Moscow" that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
The Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
The Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow"
The Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" that Vyacheslav Molotov was awarded.
Russia's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, Honorable Ernest Bevin, Britain's Foreign Minister, United States Secretary of State James Byrnes, Great Britain Prime Minister Clement Attlee, United States President Harry S. Truman, and Russian Marshal Josef Stalin in Potsdam on August 10, 1945.
King Charles St, Whitehall, Westminster, London SW1A 2AH, United Kingdom
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov leaves the Foreign Office in London with British politician Ernest Bevin, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Soviet diplomat Fedor Tarasovich Gusev after a meeting on September 11, 1945.
Vyacheslav Molotov, Josef Stalin and Russian and Soviet politicians march together at the funeral of Soviet Head of State, Mikhail Kalinin in Moscow on June 3, 1946.
Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov at the Geneva Summit discussing issues about security, German reunification, and disarmament on July 18, 1955.
(Report on the Plan of National Economy for 1936, delivere...)
Report on the Plan of National Economy for 1936, delivered on January 10, 1936, at the Second Session of the Meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.
Vyacheslav Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat who served as First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union and as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union. He also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956.
Background
Vyacheslav Molotov was born as Vyacheslav Skryabin, on March 9, 1890, in the village of Kukarka, Yaransk Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire (now Sovetsk, Kirov Oblast, Russia). He was the son of Mikhail Skryabin and Anna Nebogatikova. Molotov also had five brothers and a sister.
Education
After attending the village school, Vyacheslav Molotov studied at Kazan Real School from 1902. However, he became involved in the 1905 Revolution in Nolinsk district and 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 where he studied until 1916.
In 1906, Molotov joined the Bolsheviks and, to avoid police harassment, changed his name to Molotov. In 1909, just prior to his graduation, he was arrested for political agitation and exiled for 2 years to Vologda Province. After the exile, he made his way to St. Petersburg. Living in the capital afforded him the opportunity for involvement in the new Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and for establishing his first contact with Joseph Stalin.
In June 1915, he was again arrested and exiled, this time to the distant Siberian province of Irkutsk. Late in 1916, he escaped from Siberia and managed to get back to the capital, now renamed Petrograd, where he rejoined the revolutionary movement. He was one of the few Bolsheviks of any prominence who were in Petrograd when the monarchy was overthrown, and he became immediately involved in issuing the rejuvenated Pravda. Through the next five years, Molotov was exiled several more times for revolutionary activities but maintained his work for Pravda. Back in Saint Petersburg by 1916, he worked closely with Bolshevik leader Vladimir I. Lenin and Stalin in opposition to the Provisional Government. Molotov helped organize workers' strikes, which preceded the February Revolution in 1917.
Vyacheslav Molotov was sent to Ukraine in 1918 as the civil war was breaking out. However, as he was not a military man, he didn't take part in the fighting. Two years later, he was appointed as Secretary of the Communist Party of Donetsk Governorate and held this post from September 1920 to November 1920. On November 23, 1920, Molotov became the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and held this post until March 22, 1921. After Joseph Stalin became the General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party, Molotov gave his full support to his mentor. He also became Stalin's chief agent in agricultural policy. Molotov became a full member of the Politburo in 1926. In 1928, he was made Secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow Governorate and proceeded to purge it of non-Stalinists.
In 1930, Molotov's work was rewarded with his appointment as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union. He held this post until May 6, 1941. In 1939, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was involved in the signing of a treaty with Nazi Germany the following year, which was known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Molotov was also responsible for the negotiation of the wartime alliances with Great Britain and the USSR in 1942. On August 16, 1942, Molotov was made the first Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. At the Major Wartime international conferences, he represented the USSR along with Joseph Stalin. He also headed the Soviet delegation to the San Francisco conference in 1945, which led to the establishment of the United Nations. Later, he represented the United Nations at the postwar foreign ministers' conferences till 1949, when he stepped down as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
After Molotov was removed from his position as Foreign Minister, he still attended international conferences and took part in diplomatic events. Upon Stalin's death in March 1953, Vyacheslav Molotov was re-appointed Foreign Minister. He held this post until 1956 when disagreements grew with innovative Nikita Khrushchev. In early 1957, Molotov joined the so-called Anti-Party group of party conservatives to remove Khrushchev from power. However, this plan failed and Molotov was stripped of all his posts and practically exiled when sent to Mongolia as an ambassador between 1957 and 1960. Then he made a small comeback by becoming the Soviet representative to the International Atomic Energy Conference in Vienna. In 1961, Khrushchev carried out his de-Stalinization campaign and Molotov's devotion to Stalin got him expelled from the party in 1962. Molotov continued to live in Moscow in obscurity with his wife. Molotov passed away on November 8, 1986, after being hospitalized in the Kuntsevo Hospital in Moscow. He was 96 at the time of his demise.
When Vyacheslav Molotov attended high school, he was introduced to the ideas of German philosopher Karl Marx. Later Molotov and his friends listened to speeches and heard of the general railroad strikes, the workers' rebellion in Saint Petersburg. He joined student Marxist groups and began learning about the Bolsheviks. Molotov joined the Social Democratic Party in 1906 at the age of sixteen and leaned toward the Bolshevik faction.
Engaged in revolutionary agitation in Kazan, particularly among student groups, he was arrested in 1909 and exiled to Vologda province. After his release from exile, he continued his revolutionary agitation, again especially among student groups. In 1915, having been sent by the Party to Moscow, he was again arrested and exiled to Irkutsk province but escaped in 1916. Molotov was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, that planned the successful Bolshevik coup, known as the "October Revolution," that same year.
In December 1930, Molotov headed the Soviet government. He took the lead in Stalin's plan of collectivization of agriculture, in which private ownership of land was abolished and all farmers on state farms were grouped together. He followed Stalin's line by using a combination of force and propaganda to crush peasant resistance to collectivization, including the deportation of millions of kulaks to gulags. Molotov also oversaw the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization.
In 1936, Molotov gave an interview to the editor of Le Temps concerning improved relations with Nazi Germany. He said that improved relations with Hitler's Germany could develop only if Germany's policy changed. He stated that one of the best ways for Germany to improve relations was by re-joining the League of Nations. In 1939, Molotov became Minister of Foreign Affairs and was obliged to adjust the relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin's special order. He was responsible for negotiating the notorious Nazi-Soviet pact.
However, in 1941, Nazis attacked the Soviet Union and Molotov called Germany's aggression "unprecedented perfidy." Molotov stayed in Moscow with Stalin. One of Molotov's major concerns was to provide military deliveries from the United Kingdom and the United States and to ensure the Second Front. He was constantly engaged in tough negotiations. Molotov did not take part in troop operations. However, he was responsible for tank manufacturing.
During the Cold War Molotov was initially in charge of the Soviet Union atomic program. During the Council of Foreign Ministers Conference in Paris in April, Molotov inflamed Cold War tensions more by speaking as though all countries must come under communism sooner or later. Molotov also stressed his country wanted to keep Germany in a weakened state and divided. But on this point, the United States wanted to strengthen and reunite Germany to resist what it saw as a real possibility of Soviet expansion farther west. Because of these unbending opposite viewpoints, the Paris Peace Conference from the end of July into October 1946 was a failure.
After Molotov was re-appointed Foreign Minister, he supported Nikita Khrushchev in his struggle for power against Beria. However, Molotov's hard-line stance against the United States and Western European nations did not correlate with Khrushchev's idea of peaceful coexistence. Molotov also denounced Khrushchev's speeches against Stalin. In 1957, he headed a group against Khrushchev. When the group's "anti-Soviet activities" were discovered, Vyacheslav Molotov was removed from all governmental positions. However, in 1984, he was readmitted to the Party due to the influence of Andrey Gromyko.
Views
Quotations:
"Life has improved, and now as never before the doors to a happy and cultured life for all the peoples of our Union stand wide open."
"Germany, which has lately united 80 million Germans, has submitted certain neighboring countries to her supremacy and gained military strength in many aspects, and thus has become, as clearly can be seen, a dangerous rival to principal imperialistic powers in Europe – England and France."
"The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they are going to turn out."
"The enemy shall be defeated. Victory will be ours."
"This is not the first time that our people have had to deal with an attack of an arrogant foe. At the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia our people's reply was war for the fatherland, and Napoleon suffered defeat and met his doom. It will be the same with Hitler, who in his arrogance has proclaimed a new crusade against our country. The Red Army and our whole people will again wage victorious war for the fatherland, for our country, for honor, for liberty. The government of the Soviet Union expresses the firm conviction that the whole population of our country, all workers, peasants and intellectuals, men and women, will conscientiously perform their duties and do their work. Our entire people must now stand solid and united as never before."
Personality
Vyacheslav Molotov was a diligent and hardworking man. Those who knew him said that Molotov fully relied on Stalin's will and therefore fulfilled all his tasks and directives with extraordinary punctuality and speed.
Physical Characteristics:
According to American journalist John Gunther, Molotov was a vegetarian and teetotaler.
Quotes from others about the person
John Gunther: "Molotov has a fine forehead and looks and acts like a French professor of medicine – orderly, precise, pedantic. His importance is sometimes not appreciated; he is by no means a mere figurehead, but a man of first-rate intelligence and influence."
Winston Churchill: "He is a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness."
Connections
Vyacheslav Molotov married Polina Zhemchuzhina in 1921. The marriage produced a daughter. As Polina Zhemchuzhina was a supporter of Zionism, she was arrested for treason in 1948 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. She was released in 1953, shortly after Stalin's death. Polina Zhemchuzhina died in 1970.
Father:
Mikhail Skryabin
Mother:
Anna Nebogatikova
Brother:
Vladimir Mikhailovich Skryabin
Brother:
Nikolay Mikhailovich Nolinskiy
Brother:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Skryabin
Brother:
Viktor Mikhailovich Scriabin
Brother:
Sergey Mikhailovich Scriabin
Sister:
Zinaida Mikhailovna Scriabina
late wife:
Polina Zhemchuzhina
Daughter:
Svetlana Molotova
Grandson:
Vyacheslav Nikonov
great-nephew :
Boris Chirkov
References
Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics
In conversations with the poet-biographer Felix Chuev, Molotov offers an incomparable view of the politics of Soviet society and the nature of Kremlin leadership under communism. Filled with startling insights and indelible portraits, the book is a historical source of the first order. A mesmerizing and chilling chronicle.
1993
Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930-41
Tracing the history of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) while Molotov was chairman, this volume explores such issues as the differing roles of the Communist Party and the State in ruling the former Soviet Union and the exercise of political power in the Stalin regime.
1996
Molotov: A Biography
This is the first comprehensive biography of Molotov and reflects the range of sources that have become available to historians since the fall of the USSR. It is a commentary on Soviet history. Molotov played his part in the revolution, Civil War, Lenin's Russia, Stalin's struggle with the oppositions, collectivization, industrialization, the Terror, the Great Patriotic War, the beginnings of the Cold War, and in the Khrushchev era.