(4 of 6)
In 1935 sanctions were imposed against Italy for her Ethiopian adventure. The sanctions were emasculated by the lack of an oil embargo. In 1936 Britain instituted its "noninterference" policy in Spain. Italy and Germany—and Russia—continued to interfere. In 1937 China, a League member, was invaded by Japan. The League did nothing. In 1938 Russia proposed a joint demarche of Great Britain, France and the U. S. S. R. to protect Czecho-Slovakia, offered to carry out "to the letter" her guarantees to France and Czecho-Slovakia. Munich followed. In 1939, after Germany took the rest of Czecho-Slovakia, Russia proposed a six-power conference to devise resistance to further aggression. Great Britain said the proposal was "premature." A month later Russia proposed an ironclad, three-power alliance with Britain and France. Nothing happened for three weeks, then Litvinoff resigned.
Molotov Era. In Russia Litvinoff had stood for the idea of collective security; abroad he had represented Russia's desire for collective security. It was not Litvinoff but collective security that fell. To symbolize Russia's new reliance on herself, Joseph Stalin picked a man who represented the state bureaucracy he had created. An old-guard Bolshevik, Molotov was a quiet political boss who had risen through hard, unspectacular work to be President of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) and a member of the powerful Politbureau. In Russia he was known as the father of the collective farm movement.
Born Skriabin in 1890, he was a son of a store clerk and turned revolutionist early. He took the name Molotov (Hammer) in 1914. During World War I he organized Bolshevik groups in Moscow, was exiled to Siberia, escaped and went underground in Petrograd. During the February Revolution he was a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and collaborated with Lenin and Stalin. In 1922, during the Lenin-Trotsky split, Stalin replaced Molotov as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Molotov stayed on as Stalin's assistant, proved his loyalty during the Stalin-Trotsky struggle for power, thereafter became Stalin's most trusted assistant.
Molotov was a man Stalin could safely bring into world prominence without endangering his own prestige. (Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, No. 2 man in Russia, is scarcely heard of abroad.) Molotov is short, has a too-big head, and stammers. He looks like an unsuccessful Theodore Roosevelt. He drives himself as he drives his subordinates, holds conferences all day long, usually eats dinner at his desk. Even when he goes to a formal dinner he never wears a black tie (Litvinoff wore a white tie), and his only sartorial concession to his new job was to replace his cloth cap with a black hat.
Although Molotov was put in to symbolize Russia's new self-reliance, self-reliance did not mean isolation. Russia was still vulnerable, and the greatest, most imminent threat to her security was Germany. To the Kremlin, in the tense summer of 1939, it looked as if Great Britain and France were trying to sic Hitler on Russia. While Britain stalled and dragged out the treaty negotiations, meanwhile trying to appease Hitler over Poland, Russia also turned to Germany.