Word: molotovs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Recognized Phantoms. When the West broke off in disgust for "a day of grace," the Communists baited the trap a little: Molotov agreed that three separate armistice commissions could be formed. This meant that France would have to accord tacit recognition to the phantom Communist regimes of Laos and Cambodia as members of the armistice commissions, but the hungry French called it progress. The U.S. diagnosis:"This session got nowhere...
When he could, Bidault stood off the cocky Communists with the only weapon left to him-native wit. When Tep Phan, Foreign Minister of Cambodia, denounced the Viet Minh invasion of his country and produced a telegram reporting the murder of three Cambodians by Viet Minh rebels, Molotov was scathing. "We have heard about this telegram, but we haven't seen it," he declared scornfully. The Cambodian minister waved the telegram aloft. "Now we have seen it, but we still haven't read it," snapped Molotov, to the laughter of the Communist delegations...
Bidault stood up. "When men are dying, we should not be laughing," he said. "I should like to point out that the laughter did not come from the free nations' benches." The laughter stopped abruptly. Amid dead silence, Molotov arose and admitted sheepishly: "I agree with the French Foreign Minister...
...Dienbienphu fell strangely quiet. What was Giap up to? Was he regrouping? Was he digging his assault trenches closer to the battered French center? Was he heeding Mao Tse-tung's doctrine: "Fight only when victory is certain"? Or, more likely, was he synchronizing his next assault with Molotov's next offensive at Geneva...
...While Molotov was busy mixing peacetime Molotov cocktails (honey and ground glass) at Geneva, two other leading Communists were breathing martial fire in Moscow before the Supreme Soviet. Said Premier Malenkov, to one parliamentary chamber: "If the aggressive circles banking on the atomic weapon should resort to madness, and should want to test the strength and might of the Soviet Union, there can be no doubt that the aggressor would be crushed . . ." Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev told the other chamber: "It will inevitably end in the collapse of the whole capitalist system...