Vyacheslav Molotov Quotes (0-)

“Germany, who has latterly come to unite about 80 million Germans, who has brought certain neighboring states under her sway and who has strengthened her military might in many respects, has evidently become a dangerous competitor for the principal imperialist powers of Europe - Great Britain and France. They therefore declared war on Germany under the pretext of fulfilling their obligations to Poland. It is now clearer than ever how far the real aims of the governments of these powers are from the purpose of defending disintegrated Poland or Czechoslovakia.”

“He is very handsome and leaves a good impression. He is quite cultured, but you sense Western influence on his upbringing.”

“Havoc and ruin had been around him all of his days, either impending on himself or dealt by him to others. Certainly in Molotov the Soviet machine had found a capable and in many ways characteristic representative — always the faithful Party man and Communist disciple. How glad I am at the end of my life not to have had to endure the stresses which he has suffered; better to never have been born. In the conduct of foreign affairs, Mazarin, Talleyrand, Metternich, would welcome him to their company, if there be another world to which Bolsheviks allow themselves to go.”

“Molotov has a fine forehead, and looks and acts like a French professor of medicine — orderly, precise, pedantic. His importance is sometimes not appreciated; he is by no means a mere figurehead, but a man of first-rate intelligence and influence. Molotov is a vegetarian and a teetotaler. Stalin gives him much of the dirty work to do. He had the nasty job of admitting how many cattle and hogs were killed by the peasants before the famine.”

“One former member of [the antiparty] group [Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country [Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group [Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them.”

“We went over to Lancaster House where the last hours of the conference between the wartime allies were being played out... I thought Molotov radiated evil in a way that I have never encountered before or since. Anthony Eden told me that he was the cruellest man he had ever met. In 1991 I read General Dmitri Volkoganov's biography of Stalin, described by critics as the first serious treatment of Stalin to come out of Moscow. The references to Molotov's role are chilling, and his signature appears again and again with Stalin's on documents condemning hundreds upon hundreds of men and women to death.”

“Why did Churchill, so hard-headed about Hitler, maintain such illusions about Stalin’s tractability? In large part it was because the two dictators were viewed very differently in the West. In contrast with the plenitude of information available on Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the Soviet regime had remained virtually a closed book during this period. Diplomatic staff had minimal opportunity for contacts with Russian officials, let alone the ordinary population. Even ambassadors rarely met Stalin; they dealt with his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, renowned as a hard-faced “Mr. Nyet.” Moreover the Soviet press provided virtually no useful political intelligence, in stark contrast with the media in Washington, which offered endless insights into the White House and Capitol Hill. Churchill spoke aptly in 1939 of Soviet policy as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Then suddenly the Soviets needed outside help and the doors to the Kremlin were flung open. In the second half of 1941, Roosevelt’s emissaries Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman and Churchill’s right-hand men Max Beaverbrook and Anthony Eden all spent hours with Stalin. Churchill met him for extended summits on five occasions, joined by Roosevelt for two of them.”