This is the first comprehensive biography of Molotov and reflects the range of sources that have become available to historians since the fall of the USSR. It is a commentary on Soviet history. Molotov played his part in revolution, Civil War, Lenin's Russia, Stalin's struggle with the oppositions, collectivization, industrialization, the Terror, the Great Patriotic War, the beginnings of the Cold War, and in the Khrushchev era.

DEREK WATSON is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. He studied history at Sheffield University where he was awarded a PhD degree. After thirty years of teaching and holding senior administrative positions in higher education, he retired in 1991 to concentrate on research and writing. He is the author of Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom 1930-41 and a number of articles on Soviet history, including foreign policy.