Molotov is born
Vlacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin foreign minister for the Soviet Union who took the revolutionary name Molotov is born in Kurkaka Russia.Molotov was an enthusiastic advocate of Marxist revolution in Russia from its earliest days.He was an organizer of the Bolshevik Party in 1906 and suffered arrest in 1909 and 1915 under the czarist government for his subversive political activities.In 1921 after the coup detat that brought Vladimir Lenin to power and overthrew the old czarist regime he became secretary of the revolutionary governments Central Committee.
After Lenins death in 1924 Molotov supported Joseph Stalin as Lenins successor when Stalin did assume power Molotov was rewarded with full membership in the Soviet Politburo the executive policy-making body.In 1930 he was made chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars a position roughly the equivalent of prime minister.On the eve of World War II Molotov was also made Soviet commissar of foreign affairsthat is the foreign minister for the USSR.It was in this position that he negotiated the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact (August 1939) with Nazi Germany in which the antifascist Soviet Union and anti-Marxist Germany agreed to respect each others spheres of influence (an agreement that angered and stunned the world and that only lasted a short time).When Germany invaded the Soviet Union Molotov became a member of the State Defense Committee a war cabinet post and negotiated alliances with the United States and Great Britain arguing for a second front that would draw the Germans westward and away from the USSR.
He won a reputation as a hard and relentless advocate for Soviet interests (nicknamed Stone Ass by Roosevelt) and did little to hide his contempt for the Western democracieseven as he desperately needed and relied upon them.After the war Molotov left the foreign ministry but took it up once again upon the accession of Nikita Krushchev to power.Disagreements with Krushchev led to his dismissal from that post and anti-partyreally anti-Krushchevinvolvement led to his being deposed from all government posts and denounced as a henchman of Stalin.He was then relegated to various low-profile jobs including ambassador to Outer Mongolia.
He retired from public life in 1962 and died in 1986.Though he held many notable posts in the Soviet government many remember him for another reasonduring the war Molotov advocated the use of throwing bottles filled with flammable liquid and stuffed with a lit rag at the enemy and the famous Molotov cocktail was born.
