Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (February 25, 1890 - November 8, 1986) was a Soviet politician.

Molotov (left) and Stalin at the Yalta Conference

Born in Kukarka, Russia, Molotov in 1906 joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After what appears to be an odyssey through the landscape of geographic and political Russia including an important role in the October Revolution, he started working under Joseph Stalin in 1922. At the eve of World War II, he became People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Foreign Minister). As such, he negotiated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Molotov died on November 8, 1986, in Moscow, USSR, two years after the Communist Party rehabilitated him for his involvement in an attempted coup in 1957. The Molotov cocktail is named after him, because this weapon was created by the Finnish Army when he served as Secretary of War of the USSR at the time of the Russo-Finnish Wars of the early 1940s.