— Ch. 1 · The Quiet Revolutionary —
Vyacheslav Molotov.
~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin was born in the village of Kukarka, Yaransk Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate. He grew up as the son of a merchant and spent his teenage years described as shy and quiet. He assisted his father with business while attending secondary school in Kazan. There he befriended fellow revolutionary Aleksandr Arosev. In 1906 he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He soon gravitated toward the radical Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir Lenin.
Skryabin adopted the pseudonym Molotov derived from the Russian word for sledgehammer. He believed the name had an industrial and proletarian ring to it. His early political life involved two arrests before the October Revolution of 1917. The first arrest occurred in 1909 when he spent two years in exile in Vologda. He enrolled at St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute in 1911. That same year he joined the editorial staff of the underground newspaper Pravda. It was there that he met Joseph Stalin for the first time.
Molotov worked as a professional revolutionary for several years writing for party press. He moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. He was arrested again in 1915 and deported to Irkutsk in eastern Siberia. He escaped from Siberian exile in 1916 returning to Petrograd. By 1916 he became a member of the Bolshevik Party committee in Petrograd. When the February Revolution occurred in 1917 he was one of the few Bolsheviks of standing in the capital.
Architect Of Industrialization And Famine
Vyacheslav Molotov succeeded Alexey Rykov as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars on the 19th of December 1930. In that post he oversaw implementation of the First Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization. Despite great human cost the Soviet Union made large strides in adoption of agrarian and industrial technology. Germany secretly purchased munitions that spurred modern armaments industry in the USSR. Ultimately that arms industry along with American and British aid helped the Soviet Union prevail in World War II.
Molotov also oversaw agricultural collectivization under Stalin regime. He was main speaker at Central Committee plenum held 10, the 17th of November 1929. At that meeting decision was made to introduce collective farming replacing thousands of small farms owned by peasants. Molotov insisted it must begin following year warning officials to treat kulak as most cunning and still undefeated enemy. In four years following millions of kulaks were forcibly moved onto special settlements to be used as slave labor.
In 1931 alone almost two million people were deported. That same year Molotov told Congress of Soviets healthy prisoners capable of normal labor are used for road building and other public works. The famine caused by disruption of agricultural output and emphasis on exporting grain killed an estimated 11 million people. In September 1931 Molotov sent secret telegram to communist leaders in North Caucasus telling them collection of grain for export going disgustingly slowly.