Vyacheslav Molotov

Molotov (left) and Stalin at the Yalta Conference

He was born in Kukarka, Russia, as Vyacheslav Scriabin (Скря́бин; he was a relative of the composer Alexander Scriabin). He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906 and took the pseudonym Molotov (from Russian: hammer). He was, along with Alexander Shlyapnikov, the senior Bolshevik in Petrograd at the time of the February Revolution as figures such as Lenin were still in exile. After what appears to be an odyssey through the landscape of geographic and political Russia including an important role in the October Revolution and editing the newspaper Pravda for a while, he started working under Joseph Stalin in 1922. At the eve of World War II, he became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister). After British-French-Soviet talks held in August of 1939 failed, he negotiated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

He later served as ambassador to Mongolia and as the permanent Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Molotov died at the age of 96 on November 8, 1986, in Moscow, USSR, two years after the Communist Party rehabilitated him for his involvement in an attempted coup in 1957. Molotov was the last surviving major participant in the events of 1917.

Soldiers of the Finnish Army mockingly named the Molotov cocktail after him, as Molotov served as the Commissar for Foreign Affairs during the time of the Russo-Finnish War (1939-1940).

Referenced By