Word: molotovs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before the Council of Foreign Ministers met in London, Britain's Ernest Bevin told a friend: "If Molotov bangs his fist on the table and yells at me, I will bang my fist and yell right back at him." This childishness, not to be confused with toughness, befitted neither the great tradition of British diplomacy nor the dire necessities...
Foreign Commissar Molotov was tougher than ever before, and more tightly bound by his instructions. U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes offered him a compromise (virtually excluding France from Balkan discussions) which was generous to the point of humiliation. Molotov cabled home for instructions, got an answer: "Stick to your brief...
...Little Bomb." At a dinner party, one of the conference's few pleasant interludes, Molotov said of Byrnes: "He doesn't need to persuade anyone. He just has to hold up a little bomb." A delegate who heard him remarked: "Mr. Molotov never makes jokes just to be funny." Undoubtedly, Mr. Molotov did not think the atomic bomb was funny...
...Molotov would not concede any lack of "democracy" in Bulgaria and Rumania. Instead he pointed to the Damaskinos regime in Greece (see FOREIGN NEWS) as "undemocratic." As a result, Greece's voice was not heard directly on the Italian or Bulgarian treaties, though both countries had attacked her. Britain spoke for Greece, which had become more important to her than ever since the expansion of Russian influence in the Balkans and the new Russian claims in Africa...
...western world, it had been an interesting trip. The British had given him his first journey by air. In London he had talked with Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, the U.S.'s Jimmy Byrnes, and his exiled sovereign, George II. Thanks to the hostility of Viacheslav Molotov, the bearded statesman of Athens had been excluded from the sessions of the Council of Foreign Ministers (see INTERNATIONAL). But he had made his presence felt in London; he had dramatized the pivotal position of his country in the new geopolitics of the Mediterranean...