Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov: 1890-1986 Present At the Creation

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With his neatly trimmed mustache, pursed lips and pince-nez spectacles, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov seemed the embodiment of "the best filing clerk in Russia," as Revolutionary Leader Vladimir Lenin once called him. But his bland appearance, which led one British diplomat to compare him to a "refrigerator when the lights have gone out," was deceptive. In a political and diplomatic career that spanned the first four decades of Soviet history, Molotov earned the sobriquets "Old Stone Bottom" and "Mr. Iron Pants" from those who witnessed his legendary staying power at the negotiating table. Before his death at age 96, the loyal lieutenant and unquestioning henchman of Joseph Stalin had managed to hold out long enough to enjoy a bittersweet official rehabilitation in 1984 as one of the last survivors of the band of revolutionaries who created the world's first Communist state.

A central figure in an era of war and mass terror, Molotov proved an embarrassment to Soviet leaders who were trying to forget the terror of the Stalinist years. Indeed, the first acknowledgment of Molotov's death on Nov. 8 came early last week from the Council of Ministers in a tersely worded announcement (which was apparently delayed so it would not coincide with the 69th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution), noting that Molotov had died of a "lengthy and grave illness." The man who had lived in almost total obscurity since his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1962 was laid to rest in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery, not far from the grave of the Kremlin leader who ousted him, Nikita Khrushchev.

Molotov's name became associated around the world with the explosive "cocktail" made by stuffing rags into gasoline-filled bottles. Finnish partisans ironically named the weapon for the Soviet Foreign Minister and used it with devastating effect against Soviet tanks during the winter war of 1939-40. The Molotov cocktail gained further notoriety a year later, when ill- equipped Soviet troops were forced to deploy the makeshift fire bombs against advancing German armor. After the Nazi invasion began, it was Molotov, not the stunned and demoralized Stalin, who announced the shocking news to his countrymen in a radio broadcast.

Molotov's name was actually a pseudonym derived from the Russian word molot (hammer). He was born on March 9, 1890, into the Scriabin family, shopkeepers in the provincial town of Kukarka, northeast of Moscow (in what is now the Kirov region), a way station on the long road to Siberia. Young Scriabin chose the nom de guerre Molotov when he entered the revolutionary underground. While still a student in a czarist secondary school, he joined in the abortive 1905 revolution. Molotov helped start up the Communist Party newspaper Pravda and was an organizer of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.