Soviet Union: Voice from the Past

Even before he was ousted for conspiring against Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, former Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was not known for his dinner-table loquacity. Now nearing 80, Stalin's oldest colleague warmed up enough at a recent party to utter some pronouncements that had the ring of his late master's voice.

Asked about Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Molotov said: "She is three times a traitor—to her fatherland, to her father and to her children."

On Khrushchev: "He is beneath comment."

On how Solzhenitsyn would have been treated in Stalin's day: "He would...

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