Molotov Remembers

January 4, 1993
This chilling memoir by an unregenerate Stalinist constitutes a major firsthand source on Kremlin politics during the Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev era. Viacheslav Molotov, who died in 1986 at age 96, was an architect of Lenin's October Revolution, Stalin's second in command and Soviet foreign minister. Molotov deported 10 million people to Siberia and helped implement the liquidation of kulaks, or affluent peasants. He carried out the most murderous policies with ruthless efficiency, defending Stalinist morality as more humane than bourgeois morality. Breaking with Khrushchev, he was expelled from the Communist Party in 1962. Soviet-born Chuev recorded these 139 conversations with Molotov from 1969 to 1986. It's a startling insider account, brimming with revelations and opinionated perspectives. Molotov asserts that Lenin engineered Stalin's ``election'' as Communist Party general secretary. He also sheds light on the 1934 assassination of party boss Sergei Kirov, which gave Stalin a pretext for the Great Terror of 1936-38. Resis is professor of history emeritus at Northern Illinois University.