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KF5JRV > TODAY 25.02.19 13:31l 53 Lines 2710 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 31789_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Feb 25
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Sent: 190225/1228Z 31789@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.18
Vlacheslav Mikhaylovich Skryabin, foreign minister for the Soviet Union
who took the revolutionary name Molotov, is born in Kurkaka, Russia.
Molotov was an enthusiastic advocate of Marxist revolution in Russia
from its earliest days. He was an organizer of the Bolshevik Party in
1906 and suffered arrest in 1909 and 1915 under the czarist government
for his subversive political activities. In 1921, after the coup d’etat
that brought Vladimir Lenin to power and overthrew the old czarist
regime, he became secretary of the revolutionary government’s Central
Committee. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Molotov supported Joseph Stalin
as Lenin’s successor; when Stalin did assume power, Molotov was rewarded
with full membership in the Soviet Politburo, the executive
policy-making body.
In 1930, he was made chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, a
position roughly the equivalent of prime minister. On the eve of World
War II, Molotov was also made Soviet commissar of foreign affairs–that
is, the foreign minister for the USSR. It was in this position that he
negotiated the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact (August
1939) with Nazi Germany, in which the antifascist Soviet Union and
anti-Marxist Germany agreed to respect each other’s spheres of influence
(an agreement that angered and stunned the world, and that only lasted a
short time).
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Molotov became a member of the
State Defense Committee, a war cabinet post, and negotiated alliances
with the United States and Great Britain, arguing for a “second frontö
that would draw the Germans westward and away from the USSR. He won a
reputation as a hard and relentless advocate for Soviet interests
(nicknamed “Stone Assö by Roosevelt), and did little to hide his
contempt for the Western democracies–even as he desperately needed and
relied upon them.
After the war, Molotov left the foreign ministry, but took it up once
again upon the accession of Nikita Krushchev to power. Disagreements
with Krushchev led to his dismissal from that post, and
“anti-partyö–really anti-Krushchev–involvement led to his being deposed
from all government posts and denounced as a “henchmanö of Stalin. He
was then relegated to various low-profile jobs, including ambassador to
Outer Mongolia. He retired from public life in 1962 and died in 1986.
Though he held many notable posts in the Soviet government, many
remember him for another reason–during the war, Molotov advocated the
use of throwing bottles filled with flammable liquid and stuffed with a
lit rag at the enemy, and the famous “Molotov cocktailö was born.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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