Among many historical sources, I have drawn particularly (and gratefully) on Derek Watson’s Molotov: A Biography (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005) and on Larissa Vasilieva’s Kremlin Wives, translated by Cathy Porter (Arcade, New York, 1992). I have also made extensive use of the conversations with Molotov recorded by Felix Chuev between 1969 and 1986. Chuev’s Hundred and Forty Conversations with Molotov (Sto sorok besed s Molotovym) appeared in 1991. Albert Resis edited an abridged collection of these conversations in English, Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1993). In 1999, Chuev published a fuller, corrected edition with the resonant new title (hard to render adequately in English), Molotov: The Semi-Powerful Ruler (Molotov: poluderzhavnyi vlastelin). As well as a number of interesting photographs – Molotov at his desk, with Stalin’s young daughter, eating jam off a spoon, arm in arm with Hitler – Chuev’s book contains some evocative verbal pictures. On a ‘white fairytale winter day’, as they walk through the village of Zhukovka, Chuev and Molotov encounter Shostakovich outside his dacha. As they walk away, the composer stands and ‘looks long after Molotov’.
Chuev claims that Molotov knew he would write a book about him. Molotov’s grandson, Vyacheslav Nikonov, says this is a lie. He calls Chuev’s Hundred and Forty Conversations a ‘pirate book’, whose publication came as a great surprise to the family. Though their authenticity is not in question (and Nikonov was present at most of the meetings), Chuev’s secret recording of the conversations was, he says, ‘dishonourable’. While Nikonov is ambivalently grateful to Chuev for the preservation of historical details that might otherwise have been lost, he regrets that the elderly Molotov comes across in conversation as more stupid, less intellectual, than he was in reality. Nikonov, a political scientist and specialist in American history, is working on a multi-volume biography of his grandfather, a task for which, he says, his whole life has prepared him. The first volume (Moscow, 2005) takes Molotov as far as the year 1924, drawing on family and state archives. Nikonov gives his chapters epigraphs from Pushkin and Mandelstam; he discusses Molotov’s views on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and quotes from Tsvetaeva’s notebooks on the hungry Moscow winter of 1918–1919, when ‘we learned to love: bread, fire, wood, sun, sleep …’.
Index
Abelard, Peter (1079–1142), 1
Abramovich, Roman Arkadevich (1966–), 1
Abu Ubayd Abd Allah al-Bakri (1010–1094), 1
Abyssinia, 1
Adelaide, 1
Adenauer Foundation, 1
Adzharia, 1
Afanasiev, Alexander Nikolaevich (1826–1871), 1, 2
Afghanistan, 1
Afinogenov, Alexander Nikolaevich (1904–1941), 1
Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna (1889–1966), 1;
and Boris Filippov, 1;
‘First Elegy’, 1, 2;
in Italy, 1;
and Lev Gumilev, 1, 2, 3, 4;
and memory, 1;
and Moscow, 1;
Poem without a Hero, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;
Requiem, 1, 2, 3, 4;
and Tsushima, 1
Akunin, Boris see Chkhvartishvili
Alaska, 1
Aleksii II, (Alexei Ridiger) Patriarch of
Moscow and all the Russias (1929–2008), 1
Alexander I, Tsar (1777–1825), and banyas, 1;
death, 1;
memorial museum in Taganrog, 1, 2, 3;
military settlements, 1;
triumphal entry into Paris, 1
Alexander II, Tsar (1818–1881), 1
Alexander Gardens, 1, 2
Alexandra Fyodorovna, Tsarina (1872–1918), 1
Alexei Mikhailovich, Tsar (1629–1676), 1
Alferaki, Achilles (1846–1919), 1
Alferaki Palace (Taganrog regional museum), 1, 2, 3
Alliluyeva, Svetlana Iosifovna (1926–), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Altai region, 1
America, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Amsterdam, 1
Andreev, Andrei Andreevich (1895–1971), 1
Andrew, the Apostle, 1, 2
Andropov, Yuri Vladimirovich (1914–1984), 1
Antwerp, 1
Apatity, 1, 2
Arabia, 1, 2
Arbat, 1, 2, 3, 4
Arezzo, 1
Armenia, 1, 2
Arosev, Alexander Yakovlevich (1890–1938), 1, 2, 3
Artsykhovsky, Artemy Vladimirovich, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Astapenko, Mikhail Pavlovich (1951–), 1
Astrakhan, 1
Attila the Hun (406–453), 1, 2
Averintsev, Sergei Sergeevich (1937–2004), 1
Avvakum, Archpriest (1620–1682), 1, 2, 3, 4
Azizyan, Atyk Kegamovich (1899–1971), 1, 2
Azov, 1;
Turkish fortress, 1, 2
Azov Sea, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Babel, Isaac Emmanuilovich (1894–1940),
‘An Evening at the Tsarina’s’, 1;
‘The Story of a Horse’, 1;
‘Argamak’, 1;
and Budyonny, 1;
Cavalry Army 1, 2;
and Cheka, 1;
1920 Diary 1;
‘A Letter’, 1
Baden-Baden, 1
Baikal, Lake, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Bakhchi-Sala (Bolshye Saly), 1, 2
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975), 1
Baku, 1
Balandin, Alexei Alexandrovich (1898–1967), 1, 2, 3, 4
Balandina, Nina Alexeevna, 1, 2, 3
Balandina, Vera Arsenievna (1871–1943), 1, 2
Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich (1867–1942), 1
Baltic Sea, 1
Baltic States, 1
Barents, Willem (1550–1597), 1
Barents Sea, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Batumi, 1
Baty, Khan (reign: 1227–1255), 1, 2
Batyushkov, Konstantin Nikolaevich (1787–1855), 1, 2, 3, 4
Baudelaire, Charles (1821–1867), 1
Bebel, August (1840–1913), 1
Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770–1827), 1, 2, 3, 4
Belinsky, Vissarion Grigorevich (1811–1848), 1;
on fairy tales, 1
Beloborodov, Alexander Georgevich (1891–1938), 1, 2, 3, 4;
prosecutes Boris Dumenko, 1
Belov, Evgeny, 1
Bely, Andrei (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) (1880–1934), 1
Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5;
Arcades, 1;
Moscow Diary, 1;
One–Way Street, 1;
‘Unpacking my
Library’, 1, 2, 3
Berdyaev, Nicolas (Nikolai) Alexandrovich (1874–1948), 1, 2, 3, 4
Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich (1899–1953), 1, 2, 3, 4;