Vyacheslav molotov biography of michael jackson

By Blaine Taylor

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Compared to the whirlwind visit of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Moscow on August 23, 1939, which resulted in the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, there was little gaiety at the Anhalter railroad station that day.

Grim-faced, the bullet-headed, stammering little man with the glinting pince-nez perched on his nose reviewed a German Army honor guard with von Ribbentrop and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, both of whom he would live to see hanged six years later at Nuremberg.

“Mediocrity Incarnate”

The man whose last name alias meant “hammer” in Russian to Stalin’s own “steel” and for whom the facetious Finns named their anti-armor gasoline bomb in the famed Winter War of 1939-1940 had been sent to Berlin to make demands of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. What did the Führer mean to do in Eastern Europe opposite the new Soviet frontier with Nazi Germany? What would be the place of the Soviet Union in the Axis Pact? There were more demands, too.

According to an eyewitness, German Foreign Office interpreter Dr. Paul Schmidt, “Little time was wasted on formalities…. The representatives of Germany and Soviet Russia went for hard, expert boxing…. The questions hailed down upon Hitler. No foreign visitor had ever spoken to him in this way in my presence…. Hitler did not jump up and rush for the door…. He was meekly polite….”

Later, when the two delegations had to retreat famously to an air raid shelter during a British Royal Air Force attack, Molotov sarcastically ridiculed von Ribbentrop’s assertion that Great Britain had already lost World War II and was as good as finished: “If that is so, then why are we in this shelter, and whose are those bombs that are falling on us?”

It was, indeed, this fateful state vi

Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (9 March 1890 – 8 November 1986, born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin), Soviet politician and diplomat, was a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. Molotov held diplomatic positions for much of that time, eventually becoming the Foreign Commissar of the Soviet Union, holding the position from 1939 through 1949, including World War II. He lent his name to a non-aggression pact forged between the USSR and NaziGermany in 1939.

Molotov fell out of Stalin's favor in 1949, losing the Foreign Commissar position and being gradually frozen out of Stalin's inner circle. Indeed, there are many tell-tale signs that Stalin might have been on the verge of initiating Molotov's elimination when Stalin died in 1953. Nonetheless, Molotov remained a staunch and vocal supporter of Stalin until his own death in 1986. He opposed Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policies by joining the so-called "Anti-Party Group" within the Communist Party in 1957. He was rehabilitated by the Soviet government in the last decade of his life.

Molotov was known for his ability to suppress any expression of emotion in dipl

1939 neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union

"German–Soviet pact" redirects here. For the Weimar-era German–Soviet non-aggression pact, see Treaty of Berlin (1926).

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 (backdated 23 August 1939) by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The treaty was the culmination of negotiations around the 1938–1939 deal discussions, after tripartite discussions with the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France had broken down, and committed neither government would aid or ally itself with an enemy of the other, for the next 10 years. Under the Secret Protocol, Poland was to be shared, while Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia went to the Soviet Union. The protocol also recognized the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius region. In the west, rumoured existence of the Secret Protocol was proven only when it was made public during the Nuremberg trials.

A week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a n