Word: molotovs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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France's GEORGES BIDAULT was still smarting under his country's exclusion from the Potsdam Conference. "Molotov's objective," says Dulles, "was to provoke him to leave the conference. To that end . . . Molotov tried to outrage French honor by petty slights. He would . . ask for a postponement . . . and not tell Mr. Bidault. Mr. Bidault, appearing punctually at the original hour, would sit with growing impatience as no colleagues appeared, or return to his hotel. On occasions, he was on the verge of returning to Paris...
Dulles' conclusion: "I have seen in action all the great international statesmen of this century ... I have never seen such personal diplomatic skill at so high a degree of perfection as Mr. Molotov's." Other diplomats are not quite so laudatory: they admire Molotov's patience and his relentless persistence, but they think he is too inflexible...
...with Soft Hands. Molotov was born Vyacheslav Skriabin, son of a Great Russian retail clerk who worked in a dry-goods store in the village of Kukarka (now Sovietsk). Papa Skriabin, though far from wealthy, owned a roomy frame house; his children went to high school and learned the violin, which Molotov is said to have played badly but with soul. Molotov has claimed the composer Skriabin as an uncle, but Skriabin's family does not reciprocate...
...this day his white-collar origins embarrass Molotov. Once, when he was fulminating about the rights of the toiling masses, Britain's Bevin. a dockhand turned diplomat, rocked him with the question: "What do you know about workers?" Bevin waved his big, work-callused hands in Molotov's reddening face, and demanded: "Show me yours!" The Communist Foreign Minister, whose hands are soft as a banker's, kept them out of sight...
...Skriabins sent their son to the Czarist high school in Kazan. Eventually he made his way to the Polytechnic Institute in far-off St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). Molotov studied Marx, and in a dark, musty cellar pledged his life and liberty to the Bolshevik party. He was 16 and "sentimental"- a "slight, fragile youth," as one of the comrades described him, "with wild hair and a small, pale face lighted with brilliant, myopic eyes burning under a bulging brow...