Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics

by V. M. Molotov, Albert Resis, Felix Chuev

Release Date: October, 1993

Edition: Hardcover

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Riveting

Molotov Remembers is the only book that allows the reader an inside look at Russia pre-1917, through the Bolshevik Revolution, and on through World War II and the Cold War. This is the first time a truly insider account has been written, and who better than Vyacheslav Molotov, the notorious Soviet foreign minister who preceded Stalin as premier. This book is not necessarily contradictory to the history we were taught in school, for never before have we had such an intimate account of the dealings inside the Soviet government.

What is also particularly fascinating is not the views Molotov held about the West but the views he held of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The reader is introduced to what Molotov held as the true course for building socialism in the USSR, and one would be surprised to find out what he thought of Khrushchev and Brezhnev building "communism" in the Soviet Union.

All in all, this is an excellent buy.

Useful truths and interesting lies from a true believer

V. M. Molotov was one of the most evil, ruthless human beings who ever lived, and if there's a Hell, he's in it. For forty years he helped make sure the Communist Party ruled the Soviet Union, whatever the price -- and that price came close to being his own life, and that of his wife.

In the eighties, Felix Chuev had a long series of interviews with Molotov, and they form a fascinating picture of life on the inside of the Soviet Empire. Molotov was a true believer in Communism right till the end, ready to justify anything if he thought it waould preserve the Party's power. He still loved Stalin, and said so, while admitting that he and his wife were nearly murdered by the paranoid old tyrant. 'It was necessary,' he says.

And in a weird way, he was right. Marx's grand vision was that capitalism would industrialize the world, but the workers would hate it and destroy it. Wrong! The workers were interested in better pay and better working conditions, not running the country. And Marx never had a plan for running the economy after the revolution -- somehow, the workers would solve all problems by unanimous agreement.

When the Bolsheviks seized power, they nearly destroyed Russia's economy. Facing collapse, Lenin re-instituted a form of capitalism (the New Economic Policy) to buy time to consolidate the Communist Party's rule. But by the late twenties, the NEP had done all it could. The CPUSA had to either give up power and go to full capitalism, give up growth and be conquered by Germany, or build industry on the bones of the masses. Stalin saw this, and chose to murder millions rather than admit that capitalism just works better. Molotov was his chief henchman in these policies, and he's dead right that without them, Soviet power couldn't have survived.

But even with them, it couldn't survive. The only way a Communist society can work is by one man rule and periodic bloodbaths. But in order to preserve that rule, the dictator has to slay all successors able and ruthless enough to take his place. So invariably, the Great Killer's successors are mediocrities, and the totalitarian system rots from within. It will happen in China before the 2020s are out, and in Cuba by the 2030s.

All students of Russia and the former Soviet Union (and I still LOVE to type 'former Soviet Union') should read this book and see what is necessary to hold the kind of power Lenin and Stalin did, to achieve what little they achieved, and why in the end it still had to fail.