Vyacheslav Molotov
1. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik, and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s to 1956.
2. At his secondary school he joined the illegal Bolshevik Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1906. For his political work he took the pseudonym Molotov: the Russian word for hammer.
3. After being arrested for anti-government activity in 1909 he spent two years in Siberia.
4. In 1911 he enrolled at the St Petersburg Polytechnic, and joined the editorial staff of Pravda, the underground Bolshevik newspaper, where Joseph Stalin was editor. Molotov refined his propaganda techniques. Many times, Stalin and his men bent the truth in order to keep the public calm and to maintain their control.
5. Molotov proved himself a true supporter of Stalin, especially during the struggle for power that followed Lenin’s death in 1924. When Stalin overcame his political opponents he showed his gratitude to Molotov and made him his closest associate.
6. Molotov oversaw the Stalin regime's collectivisation of agriculture where peasants were integrated into collective farms belonging to the state. He followed Stalin's strategy by using a combination of force and propaganda to crush peasant resistance including the deportation of millions of kulaks (peasants with property) to labour camps.
7. The death of Sergey Kirov triggered a crisis known as the Great Purge. In 1938, out of the twenty-eight People in Molotov's Government, twenty were executed on the orders of Molotov and Stalin. The Purge started when Kirov the leader of the Leningrad party was assassinated. A list from the Great Purge signed by Molotov, Stalin, and others.
8. Estimates suggest that around 500,000 party members were arrested on charges of Anti Soviet activities and either executed or sent to Gulags in Siberia. Stalin used this murder as an excuse to eliminate his opponents in the party. Stalin frequently required Molotov...