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The Vyacheslav Molotov Book Report Essay Research

The Vyacheslav Molotov Book Report Essay, Research Paper


For much of the time between 1930 and 1952, Vyacheslav


Molotov, a laconic, unsmiling man called Mr Nyet behind


his back by western diplomats, was second only to


Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. He played a decisive


role in the famine of 1932, during which millions of


peasants died of starvation and disease. He was


instrumental in liquidating the kulaks (the land-owning


farmers). He was Stalin’s faithful henchman during the


Great Terror, in 1936-38, when both the Red Army


command and the country’s political leadership were


decimated. His name is on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact


of 1939, which kept the Soviet Union out of the war


until it was attacked by Hitler two years later. His


final years as a power in the land encompassed some of


the chilliest days of the cold war.Nikita Khrushchev,


Molotov’s rival, sent him out of harm’s way, as


ambassador to Outer Mongolia. In 1962 Molotov was


expelled from the party but he was re-instated in 1984.


Having served Lenin and Stalin, he died a pensioner in


1986, aged 96. Not a bad record for somebody whom a


British historian, D.C. Watt, described as “one of the


most inexorably stupid men to hold the foreign minister


ship of any major power in this century.” That judgment


is inaccurate, as this book shows. Molotov was the


supreme apparatchik. Stalin ordered him to divorce his


wife. Molotov complied–only to be reunited with her


after Stalin’s death. Resilience guided by intuitive


cunning ensured his endurance, but only just. “I think that if he [Stalin] had remained alive another year, I would not have survived.” For all that, Molotov remained

to the last an unrepentant


Stalinist, defending without equivocation everything


Stalin did and stood for. Felix Chuev, a Russian


biographer and an admirer of Molotov, painstakingly


recorded conversations with his hero in meetings


stretching over a period of 17 years. These


conversations have been edited for this book by


Albert Resis, an American historian. Although some of


the material is uninteresting, a lot of it is both


significant and fascinating. The book is organised not


chronologically but according to topics. This helps


impart a more vivid, comprehensive impression of


Molotov and his times. On international affairs,


Molotov is typically epigrammatic. In the sections


“With Lenin” and “With Stalin”, he is almost expansive.


Although you feel that Mr Chuev is far too easy on his


subject throughout, here the book really comes to life.


The central message in all that Molotov has to say is


that Stalin was right. Molotov himself predicts: In


time, Stalin will be rehabilitated in history. There


will be a Stalin museum in Moscow. Without fail! By


popular demand. The role of Stalin was tremendous. I do


not doubt that his name will rise again and duly win


a glorious place in history. In 1991 Terra, a leading


Moscow publisher, printed 300,000 copies of an earlier


version of this book. In his introduction, Mr Resis


suggests that its publication was “intended to rally


neo-Stalinists and other hard-liners in a movement to


oust Gorbachev and establish a quasi-Stalinist


regime.” The results of Russia’s elections presumably


came as less of a surprise to the publishers than to


many western commentators.

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