Speeches that Changed the World

VYACHESLAV MOLOTOV

Born 9 March 1890 in Kukarka (also called Sovetsk), Russia.

His family name was Scriabin (and he was related to the composer Alexander Scriabin). He became politically active as a student, and adopted the pseudonym Molotov (‘Hammer’) on joining the Bolsheviks in 1906. He was arrested in 1909 for the first time and exiled in northern Russia until 1911. Afterwards, he joined the editorial board of Pravda (‘Truth’), the Bolshevik newspaper, and around this time met Stalin. He was part of the military revolutionary committee that planned the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution (1917). After Lenin’s death, he earned promotion to full Politburo membership (1926) and, with Stalin now pre-eminent, he helped purge the Moscow Communist Party of anti-Stalin members, 1928–30. Molotov served as foreign minister in 1939–49 and 1953–56, but the rise of Nikita Khrushchev as premier saw him dismissed from government posts and leading party bodies. He was given the lowly position of Ambassador to Mongolia and in 1962 expelled from the Communist Party (until reinstated in 1984).

Died 8 November 1986 in Moscow.

It was Vyacheslav Molotov – Joseph Stalin’s foreign minister – who unwittingly inspired the ‘Molotov cocktail’, an improvised petrol bomb first used against Soviet tanks by Finns during their Winter War of 1939–40. It was the same Molotov who signed, at his master’s bidding, the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939. He was also doing his master’s bidding when, on 22 June 1941, he was tasked with broadcasting the news to his countrymen and women that Germany had torn up that agreement and was invading the Soviet Union on a massive scale.

The pact had been suggested by Germany as an expedient to keep the Soviet Union out of any Anglo-French alliance, and to ensure that Stalin would not interfere in German plans to invade Poland. Stalin regarded it as being in Soviet interests to sign, and then, despite deteriorating Soviet–German relations, could not bring himself to believe that Hitler would, or could, renege on it so soon. But for Hitler, the invasion of the Soviet Union and expansion of Germany’s Lebensraum (literally ‘living space’) eastwards was always a cherished project. The existence of the pact had done nothing to assuage the Nazi leader’s contempt, ideologically and racially, for the communist system or for Slav peoples.

At 3 a.m. on the morning of 22 June 1941, 3.5 million German, Romanian, Finnish and other Axis troops flooded across the Soviet borders. Despite evidence of the build-up of troops, and despite explicit warnings to Stalin from Winston Churchill (which Stalin dismissed), Soviet defences were unprepared. Stalin himself, rather than taking the helm at the nation’s hour of crisis, disappeared from view, leaving it to Molotov to try and rally the country in the name of ‘our great leader and comrade, Stalin’.

Within the first fortnight of the invasion, the Soviet Union lost a million men, nearly all its aircraft and thousands of tanks. Stalin ordered retreating Russians to ‘scorch the earth’ in order to render the land incapable of supporting the advancing German army. Through the summer of 1941, the Axis forces gained rapid ground, taking Leningrad and Kiev, and thousands of civilian men, women and children died in the indiscriminate killing. Molotov had promised on 22 June that ‘Victory will be ours’, and in the end a resurgent Red Army turned the tables decisively. But the bitterly fought ‘Great Patriotic War’, as it is known in Russia, consumed over 20 million Soviet lives.

As for Molotov, during the war he played a vital role in secret conferences with US representatives, such as W. Averell Harriman, to secure American arms. But his later career could not withstand his reputation as a Stalinist apparatchik, and though he lived to be 96 he was sidelined after 1956.

The Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, have authorized me to make the following statement:

Today at 4 a.m., without any claims having been presented to the Soviet Union, without a declaration of war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders at many points and bombed from their airplanes our cities Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, killing and wounding over 200 persons.

. . . This unheard of attack upon our country is perfidy unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. The attack on our country was perpetrated despite the fact that a treaty of non-aggression had been signed between the USSR and Germany and that the Soviet government most faithfully abided by all provisions of this treaty.

The attack upon our country was perpetrated despite the fact that during the entire period of operation of this treaty, the German government could not find grounds for a single complaint against the USSR as regards observance of this treaty.

Entire responsibility for this predatory attack upon the Soviet Union falls fully and completely upon the German fascist rulers.

At 5.30 a.m., that is, after the attack had already been perpetrated, [Friedrich] Von der Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, on behalf of his government made the statement to me as People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs to the effect that the German government had decided to launch war against the USSR in connection with the concentration of Red Army units near the eastern German frontier.

In reply to this I stated on behalf of the Soviet government that, until the very last moment, the German government had not presented any claims to the Soviet government, that Germany attacked the USSR despite the peaceable position of the Soviet Union, and that for this reason fascist Germany is the aggressor.

On instruction of the government of the Soviet Union I also stated that at no point had our troops or our air force committed a violation of the frontier and therefore the statement made this morning by the Romanian radio to the effect that Soviet aircraft allegedly had fired on Romanian aerodromes is a sheer lie and provocation.

. . . This war has been forced upon us, not by the German people, not by German workers, peasants and intellectuals, whose sufferings we well understand, but by the clique of bloodthirsty fascist rulers of Germany who have enslaved Frenchmen, Czechs, Poles, Serbians, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Greece and other nations.

. . . This is not the first time that our people have had to deal with an attack of an arrogant foe. At the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia our people’s reply was war for the fatherland, and Napoleon suffered defeat and met his doom.

It will be the same with Hitler, who in his arrogance has proclaimed a new crusade against our country. The Red Army and our whole people will again wage victorious war for the fatherland, for our country, for honour, for liberty.

. . . The government calls upon you, citizens of the Soviet Union, to rally still more closely around our glorious Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet government, around our great leader and comrade, Stalin. Ours is a righteous cause. The enemy shall be defeated. Victory will be ours.

‘Perfidy unparalleled in the history of civilized nations’