Vyacheslav Molotov | Molotov ( left ) meets Raab ( right ) in Moscow for the talks that paved the way to the Austrian State Treaty.

One cannot but wonder whether these doubts about the success of Khrushchev's agricultural policy have not at least something to do with one of the big surprises provided by this Congress -- the obsessive harping on the crimes and misdeeds of the `` anti-party group '' -- Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others -- including the eighty-year-old Marshal Voroshilov.

Molotov, in particular, is being charged with all kinds of sins -- especially with wanting to cut down free public services, to increase rents and fares ; ;

The trouble with all these doctrinal quarrels is that we hear only one side of the story: what, in the secret councils of the Kremlin, Molotov had really proposed, we just don't know, and he has had no chance to reply.

The effect of Chou En-lai's clash with Khrushchev, together with the everlasting attacks on Molotov & Co., has shifted the whole attention of the world, including that of the Soviet people, from the `` epoch-making '' twenty-year program to the present Soviet-Chinese conflict.

Administration officials met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and others to press for an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.

Not all conflicts were below the surface, and Grigory Ordzhonikidze, the People's Commissar for Heavy Industry openly disputed with Vyacheslav Molotov, the Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars, about the rate of economic growth.

Stalin managed to liquidate the Central Committee with the committee's own consent, as Molotov once put it " This gradually occured.

A makeshift incendiary bomb consisting of a bottle of flammable liquid ( usually gasoline ) with a flaming rag attached is known as a " Molotov cocktail ".

After a failed attempt to sign an anti-German military alliance with France and Britain and talks with Germany regarding a potential political deal, on 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, negotiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Stalin and Molotov on the signing of the Soviet – Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, 1941

" After a conference in Berlin between Hitler, Molotov and Ribbentrop, Germany presented Molotov with a proposed written agreement for Axis entry.

In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: ( 1 ) a mutual assistance / aid pact and ( 2 ) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact.

During the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, Ribbentrop was overjoyed by a report from his Ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, of a speech by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin before the 18th Party Congress in March 1939 that was strongly anti-Western, which Schulenburg reported meant that the Soviet Union might be seeking an accord with Germany.

Ribbentrop had only expected to see the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, and was most surprised to be holding talks with Joseph Stalin.

During his trip to Moscow, Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin and Molotov proceed very cordially and efficiently with the exception of the question of Latvia, which Hitler had instructed Ribbentrop to try to claim for Germany.

After finishing his talks with Stalin and Molotov, Ribbentrop, at a dinner with the Soviet leaders, launched into a lengthy diatribe against the British Empire, with frequent interjections of approval from Stalin, and then exchanged toasts with Stalin in honour of German-Soviet friendship.

The Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, also known as the Nazi – Soviet Pact and the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact ( after its chief architects, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ) was a non-aggression pact, signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939, at the height of the Nomonhan fighting in the far east between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan.

Along with Germany's Joachim von Ribbentrop, Molotov is among the first humans to orbit the Earth.

On August 23, 1939, a German delegation headed by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived to Moscow, and in the following night the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed by him and his Soviet colleague Vyacheslav Molotov, in the presence of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Joachim von Ribbentrop welcoming Vyacheslav Molotov in Berlin, November 1940

In November 1940 Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to meet von Ribbentrop and Adolf Hitler ( see German – Soviet Axis talks # Molotov travels to Berlin ).

In August 1933, Molotov assured German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen that Soviet-German relations would depend exclusively on the position of Germany towards the Soviet Union.

Fitzroy Maclean, then a young diplomat in the British Embassy, states in his memoir Eastern Approaches that von Herwarth condemned the appeasement of the Munich Agreement, predicted a Soviet-German commitment to non-aggression ( which came to pass as the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact ), and saw ahead to what he called " the destruction of Germany ".

Early in 1941 he started writing for the American Partisan Review and contributed to Gollancz ' anthology The Betrayal of the Left, written in the light of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact ( although Orwell referred to it as the Russo-German Pact and the Hitler-Stalin Pact ).

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov – Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi and Soviet-controlled zones.

On 25 May 1939, Ribbentrop sent a secret message to Moscow to tell the Soviet Foreign Commissar, Vyacheslav Molotov, that if Germany attacked Poland " Russia's special interests would be taken into consideration ".

The signing of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 not only won Germany an informal alliance with the Soviet Union, but also neutralized Anglo-French attempts to win Turkey to the “ peace front ”.

On 27 September 1939, Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow, where at meetings with the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin, he was forced to agree to revising the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact in the Soviet Union's favour, most notably agreeing to Stalin's demand that Lithuania go to the Soviet Union.

In November 1940, during the visit of the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin, Ribbentrop tried hard to get the Soviet Union to sign the Tripartite Pact.

Ribbentrop presented a proposal to Molotov where after the defeat of Britain, the Soviet Union would have India and the Middle East, Italy the Mediterranean area, Japan the British possessions in the Far East ( presuming of course that Japan would enter the war ), and Germany would take Central Africa and Britain itself.

Ribbentrop is also a key figure in the historical novel Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley ( Penguin Books 1982, ISBN 0-14-006268-8 ) and Harry Turtledove's alternate history series Worldwar where his Soviet counterpart Molotov frequently expresses contempt for his lack of intelligence.

It remained independent until the outset of World War II, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact.

The Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact is commonly referred to under a number of names in addition to the official one and the one bearing the names of the foreign ministers.

of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact

The Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact was received with shock by Nazi Germany ’ s allies, notably Japan, by the Comintern and foreign communist parties, and by Jewish communities all around the world.

Improvised incendiary devices were used for the first time in the Spanish Civil War between July 1936 and April 1939, before they became known as " Molotov cocktails ".

The Soviet Union and Germany signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact, shortly before the German invasion of Poland which triggered the Second World War in 1939 and was followed by the Soviet invasion of Poland.

When Harry S. Truman, the American President, told Stalin that the Americans had created a bomb never seen before, Stalin related the conversation to Molotov and told him to speed up development.

Shortly before his death in 1953, Stalin considered launching a new purge against Mikoyan, Vyacheslav Molotov, and several other Party leaders.

" Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov spoke to the German ambassador to the Soviet Union on November 30 — a day before the proclamation of the Finnish Democratic Republic — saying that, " This government would not be Soviet but a democratic republic.

Renshaw plots to attack the soldiers with a Molotov cocktail constructed from a bottle of lighter fluid, but before the cocktail detonates the entire apartment explodes, and kills him.

Malenkov and Molotov had been removed from their positions as Premier and Foreign Minister the year before.

Shortly before midnight, Molotov presented Lithuania with a ten-hour ultimatum, demanding the replacement of the Lithuanian government with a pro-Soviet one and free access for additional Soviet troops, threatening the country with immediate occupation otherwise.