The Vyacheslav Molotov Book Report Essay -- Essays Papers

The Vyacheslav permanent Book ReportFor much of the time amongst 1930 and 1952, Vyacheslav Molotov, a laconic, unsmiling man called Mr Nyet behind his back by Hesperian 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 gain-owning farmers). He was Stalins faithful henchman during the Great Terror, in 1936-38, when both the Red host 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 embassador to Outer Mongolia. In 1962 Molotov was expelled from the party but he was re-instated in 1984. Hav ing 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 themost inexorably stupid men to hold the remote minister ship of any major power in this century. That concept 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 Stalins death. Resilience guided by intuitive dicey ensured ...