Vyacheslav Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956.
65 Facts About Vyacheslav Molotov
2.
Vyacheslav Molotov retained his place as a leading Soviet diplomat and politician until March 1949, when he fell out of Stalin's favour and lost the foreign affairs ministry leadership to Andrei Vyshinsky.
3.
Vyacheslav Molotov was reappointed Minister of Foreign Affairs after Stalin's death in 1953 but staunchly opposed Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy, which resulted in his eventual dismissal from all positions and expulsion from the party in 1961.
4.
Vyacheslav Molotov defended Stalin's policies and legacy until his death in 1986 and harshly criticised Stalin's successors, especially Khrushchev.
5.
Vyacheslav Molotov was educated at a secondary school in Kazan, where he became friends with fellow revolutionary Aleksandr Arosev.
6.
Vyacheslav Molotov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, and soon gravitated toward the organisation's radical Bolshevik faction, which was led by Vladimir Lenin.
7.
Vyacheslav Molotov was arrested in 1909 and spent two years in exile in Vologda.
8.
Vyacheslav Molotov joined the editorial staff of a new underground Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, and met Joseph Stalin for the first time in association with the project.
9.
Vyacheslav Molotov worked as a so-called "professional revolutionary" for the next several years, wrote for the party press, and attempted to improve the organisation of the underground party.
10.
Vyacheslav Molotov moved from St Petersburg to Moscow in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War.
11.
Vyacheslav Molotov became a member of the Bolshevik Party's committee in Petrograd in 1916.
12.
However, Vyacheslav Molotov became a protege of and a close adherent to Stalin, an alliance to which he owed his later prominence.
13.
In 1918, Vyacheslav Molotov was sent to Ukraine to take part in the Russian Civil War, which had broken out.
14.
Vyacheslav Molotov was transferred to Donetsk, and in November 1920, he became secretary to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party and married the Soviet politician Polina Zhemchuzhina.
15.
Vyacheslav Molotov was voted in as a non-voting member of the Politburo in 1921 and held the office of Responsible Secretary.
16.
Vyacheslav Molotov was criticised by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, with Lenin noting his "shameful bureaucratism" and "stupid behaviour".
17.
Under Stalin's patronage, Vyacheslav Molotov became a full member of the Politburo in January 1926.
18.
In 1928, Vyacheslav Molotov replaced Nikolai Uglanov as First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party and held that position until 15 August 1929.
19.
Vyacheslav Molotov operated mainly behind the scenes and cultivated an image of a colourless bureaucrat.
20.
Vyacheslav Molotov was reported to be a vegetarian and teetotaler by the American journalist John Gunther in 1938.
21.
However, Milovan Djilas claimed that Vyacheslav Molotov "drank more than Stalin" and did not note his vegetarianism although they had attended several banquets.
22.
Vyacheslav Molotov and his wife had two daughters: Sonia, adopted in 1929, and Svetlana, born in 1930.
23.
In that post, Vyacheslav Molotov oversaw the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialisation.
24.
Vyacheslav Molotov returned to Kharkiv in July 1932, with Lazar Kaganovich, to tell the local communists that there would be no "concessions or vacillations" in the drive to meet targets for exporting grain.
25.
In May 1936, Vyacheslav Molotov went to the Black Sea on an extended holiday under careful NKVD supervision until the end of August, when Stalin apparently changed his mind and ordered Vyacheslav Molotov's return.
26.
On 19 March 1936 Vyacheslav Molotov gave an interview with the editor of Le Temps concerning improved relations with Nazi Germany.
27.
Vyacheslav Molotov had made it clear that improved relations with Germany could develop only if its policy changed and stated that one of the best ways for Germany to improve relations was to rejoin the League of Nations.
28.
Vyacheslav Molotov was one of the few with whom Stalin openly discussed the purges.
29.
In 1937, fearing arrest, Arosev tried three times to ring Vyacheslav Molotov, who refused to speak to him.
30.
Late in life, Vyacheslav Molotov described his role in purges of the 1930s, arguing that despite the overbreadth of the purges, they were necessary to avoid Soviet defeat in World War II:.
31.
In May 1939, Maxim Litvinov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was dismissed; Vyacheslav Molotov was appointed to succeed him.
32.
Vyacheslav Molotov was always resentful of Litvinov's fluency in French, German and English, as he was distrustful of Litvinov's easy manner with foreigners.
33.
Never having lived abroad, Vyacheslav Molotov always suspected that there was something impure and sinful in Litvinov's broad-mindedness and appreciation of Western civilisation.
34.
Vyacheslav Molotov was succeeded in his post as premier by Stalin.
35.
Vyacheslav Molotov was given a free hand in relation to Finland.
36.
Vyacheslav Molotov was responsible for telling the Soviet people of the attack when he, instead of Stalin, announced the war.
37.
Stalin was elected chairman and Vyacheslav Molotov was elected deputy chairman.
38.
Vyacheslav Molotov took a secret flight to Scotland, where he was greeted by Eden.
39.
When Beria told Stalin about the Manhattan Project and its importance, Stalin handpicked Vyacheslav Molotov to be the man in charge of the Soviet atomic bomb project.
40.
When Roosevelt's successor as US President Harry S Truman told Stalin that the Americans had created a bomb never seen before, Stalin relayed the conversation to Molotov and told him to speed up development.
41.
Vyacheslav Molotov asked the writers to include a line or two about peace.
42.
Vyacheslav Molotov accompanied Stalin to the Teheran Conference in 1943, the Yalta Conference in 1945, and, after the defeat of Germany, the Potsdam Conference.
43.
Vyacheslav Molotov represented the Soviet Union at the San Francisco Conference, which created the United Nations.
44.
Vyacheslav Molotov lost his position of First Deputy chairman on 19 March 1946, after the Council of People's Commissars had been reformed as the Council of Ministers.
45.
From 1945 to 1947, Vyacheslav Molotov took part in all four conferences of foreign ministers of the victorious states in the Second World War.
46.
Vyacheslav Molotov was sentenced to hard labour, spending five years in exile in Kazakhstan.
47.
Vyacheslav Molotov had no communication with her except for the scant news that he received from Beria, whom he loathed.
48.
In 1949, Vyacheslav Molotov was replaced as Foreign Minister by Andrey Vyshinsky but retained his position as First Deputy Premier and membership in the Politburo.
49.
Vyacheslav Molotov was a yes-man to his wife just as he was to Stalin.
50.
At the 19th Party Congress in 1952, Vyacheslav Molotov was elected to the replacement for the Politburo, the Presidium, but was not listed among the members of the newly established secret body known as the Bureau of the Presidium, which indicated that he had fallen out of Stalin's favour.
51.
Vyacheslav Molotov supported the removal and later the execution of Beria on the orders of Khrushchev.
52.
Vyacheslav Molotov presided over a gradual domestic liberalisation and a thaw in foreign policy, as was manifest in a reconciliation with Josip Broz Tito's government in Yugoslavia, which Stalin had expelled from the communist movement.
53.
Vyacheslav Molotov's position became increasingly tenuous after February 1956, when Khrushchev launched an unexpected denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party.
54.
Vyacheslav Molotov was the most senior of Stalin's collaborators still in government and had played a leading role in the purges, so it became evident that Khrushchev's examination of the past would probably result in the fall from power of Vyacheslav Molotov, who became the leader of an old-guard faction that sought to overthrow Khrushchev.
55.
In June 1956, Vyacheslav Molotov was removed as Foreign Minister; on 29 June 1957, he was expelled from the Presidium after a failed attempt to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary.
56.
In retirement, Vyacheslav Molotov remained unrepentant about his role under Stalin's rule.
57.
In 1968, United Press International reported that Vyacheslav Molotov had completed his memoirs but that they would likely never be published.
58.
The first signs of Vyacheslav Molotov's rehabilitation were seen during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, when information about him was again allowed to be included in Soviet encyclopaedias.
59.
In 1984, Vyacheslav Molotov was even allowed to seek membership in the Communist Party.
60.
In June 1986 Vyacheslav Molotov was hospitalised in Kuntsevo Hospital in Moscow, where he eventually died, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, on 8 November 1986.
61.
Vyacheslav Molotov was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
62.
Vyacheslav Molotov saw the Cold War as more or less the everyday conflict between communism and capitalism.
63.
Vyacheslav Molotov believed that socialist states were part of a larger, supranational entity.
64.
The Vyacheslav Molotov cocktail is a term coined by the Finns during the Winter War, as a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons.
65.
When Vyacheslav Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that they were not bombing but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Vyacheslav Molotov bread baskets.