Word: molotovs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among the many dubious distinctions enjoyed by Soviet ex-Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov is that of having guessed right about Lenin in 1917. It is a point that Molotov, in his 30 years of steely self-discipline in the service of the egocentric Stalin, seldom boasted about. Last week 67-year-old Molotov gave rein to his long-suppressed Bolshevik pride in an article that took up two-thirds of a page in Pravda...
...occasion for Molotov's burst of reminiscence was the 40th anniversary of his first meeting with Lenin. The milder February Revolution of 1917, sled by the Social-Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and their allies, had broken out. Most of the leading Bolsheviks were still on their way to Petrograd from places of exile. In their absence Molotov, one of the editors of Pravda, gave out Bolshevik policy: Demand the complete Marxist program forthwith. When the big Bolsheviks arrived, they pooh-poohed the youthful (27) Molotov's naive and uncompromising view. But when Lenin stepped...
Diplomats called him "the oldest young man in the world" because of his cold, deadpan expression. Born near Minsk in the village of Gromyki (90% of whose inhabitants are called Gromyko), he started out as a teacher and never lost his pedantry. Molotov plucked him out of the Academy of Sciences in 1939, and his fortunes have paralleled those of his master. He was at Molotov's elbow at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam...
Behind the formality, observers detected a skillful diplomatic technician, in this respect second only to Molotov. He could not change the U.N. majority against him, but he could and did bog it down in technicalities and delays, until fine hot outrage was largely dissipated and the vote anticlimactic. His own bosses, slow to give him high rating, only last year made him a full member of the Central Committee. Later he accompanied B. & K. on their laughing-boy journey through India and Burma, and was seen on occasion to smile himself...
Amid all the onrush of speculation over whether Gromyko's appointment means a revival of the old hard-face Molotov policies, the basic fact remains that Russian Foreign Secretaries are not of the top circle of Kremlin leadership these days: they make the faces, but they do not make the policies. As if to underline this fact, and incidentally to acknowledge the abruptness of the change of ministers, the Kremlin announced that the "definitive" foreign-policy speech made four days earlier by Shepilov was still definitive, even though he had already lost...