The Vyacheslav Molotov Book Report Essay -- Essays Papers

The Vyacheslav Molotov Book ReportFor much of the time between 1930 and 1952, Vyacheslav Molotov, a laconic, unsmiling serviceman called Mr Nyet behind his back by western diplomats, was second only to Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. He played a decisiverole 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 Stalins faithful henchman during the Great Terror, in 1936-38, when both the Red Army command and the countrys 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, Molotovs rival, sent him out of harms 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 pensi geniusr in 1986, aged 96. Not a bad record for somebody whom a British historian, D.C. Watt, described as one of themost inexorably stupid men to hold the foreign minister ship of any major power in this century. That judgment is inaccurate, as this handwriting shows. Molotov was the supreme apparatchik. Stalin ordered him to divorce his wife. Molotov complied--only to be reunited with her after Stalins death. Resilience guided by intuitive cunning ensured ...