William Bradford Shockley Jr.
Born	February 13, 1910(1910-02-13) London, England, United Kingdom
Died	August 12, 1989(1989-08-12) (aged 79) Stanford, California, United States
Nationality	American
Institutions	Bell Labs Shockley Semiconductor Stanford University
Alma mater	Caltech MIT
Doctoral advisor	John C. Slater
Known for	Transistor
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1956) Comstock Prize in Physics (1953) IEEE Medal of Honor(1980)

William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, Shockley was a professor at Stanford and became a staunch advocate of eugenics.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Shockley was born in London, England to American parents, and raised in his family's hometown of Palo Alto, California, from age three.^[2] His father, William senior, was a mining engineer who speculated in mines for a living, and spoke eight languages. His mother, Mary, grew up in the American West, graduated from Stanford University, and became the first female US Deputy mining surveyor.^[3]

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1932. While still a student, Shockley married Iowan Jean Bailey in August 1933. In March 1934 Jean had a baby girl, Alison; she also had a son, Richard (Dick). Shockley was awarded his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. The title of his doctoral thesis was Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride, and was suggested by his thesis advisor, John C. Slater. After receiving his doctorate, he joined a research group headed by Clinton Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey. The next few years were productive ones for Shockley. He published a number of fundamental papers on solid state physics in Physical Review. In 1938, he got his first patent, "Electron Discharge Device" on electron multipliers.

When World War II broke out, Shockley became involved in radar research at the labs in Whippany, New Jersey. In May 1942 he took leave from Bell Labs to become a research director at Columbia University's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Group.^[4] This involved devising methods for countering the tactics of submarines with improved convoying techniques, optimizing depth charge patterns, and so on. This project required frequent trips to the Pentagon and Washington, where Shockley met many high ranking officers and government officials. In 1944 he organized a training program for B-29 bomber pilots to use new radar Bombsights. In late 1944 he took a three month tour to bases around the world to assess the results. For this project, Secretary of War Robert Patterson awarded Shockley the Medal for Merit on October 17, 1946.

In July 1945, the War Department asked Shockley to prepare a report on the question of probable casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Shockley concluded:

If the study shows that the behavior of nations in all historical cases comparable to Japan's has in fact been invariably consistent with the behavior of the troops in battle, then it means that the Japanese dead and ineffectives at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall probably have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 killed.^[5]

This prediction influenced the decision for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender without an invasion.^[6]

Solid-state transistor[link]

Shortly after the end of the war in 1945, Bell Labs formed a Solid State Physics Group, led by Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan, which included John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore, and several technicians. Their assignment was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Its first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity. These experiments failed every time in all sorts of configurations and materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor. The group changed its focus to study these surface states and they met almost daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent, and ideas were freely exchanged.^[7]

By the winter of 1946 they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to Physical Review. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface. This led to several more papers (one of them co-authored with Shockley), which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up significantly when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit that allowed them to vary the frequency of the input signal easily. Finally they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of glycol borate (a viscous chemical that did not evaporate) placed across a P-N junction.^[8]

John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs, 1948.

December 1947 was Bell Labs' "Miracle Month," when Bardeen and Brattain – working without Shockley – succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor that achieved amplification. Within the next month, Bell Labs' patent attorneys started to work on the patent applications.

Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and devices based on it patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925.^[9][10] Although the patent appeared "breakable" (it could not work) the patent attorneys based one of its four patent applications only on the Bardeen-Brattain point contact design. Three others (submitted first) covered the electrolyte-based transistors with Bardeen, Gibney and Brattain as the inventors. Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications. This angered Shockley, who thought his name should also be on the patents because the work was based on his field effect idea. He even made efforts to have the patent written only in his name, and told Bardeen and Brattain of his intentions.^[11]

At the same time he secretly continued his own work to build a different sort of transistor based on junctions instead of point contacts; he expected this kind of design would be more likely to be commercially viable. The point contact transistor, he believed, would prove to be fragile and difficult to manufacture. Shockley was also dissatisfied with certain parts of the explanation for how the point contact transistor worked and conceived of the possibility of minority carrier injection. Shockley worked out a rather complete description of what he called the "sandwich" transistor, and a first proof of principle was obtained on April 7, 1949.

This resulted in his invention of the junction transistor, which was announced at a press conference on July 4, 1951. Shockley obtained a patent for this invention on September 25, 1951. Different fabrication methods for this device were developed over the next several years, but a diffusion based/photolithographic procedure quickly became the method of choice for many applications. It soon eclipsed the point contact transistor, and it and its offspring became overwhelmingly dominant in the marketplace for many years. Shockley continued as a group head to lead much of the effort at Bell Labs to improve it and its fabrication for two more years.

Meanwhile, Shockley worked furiously on his magnum opus, Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors which was finally published as a 558 page treatise in 1950. In it, Shockley worked out the critical ideas of drift and diffusion and the differential equations that govern the flow of electrons in solid state crystals. Shockley's diode equation is also described. This seminal work became the "bible" for an entire generation of scientists working to develop and improve new variants of the transistor and other devices based on semiconductors.

In 1951, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He was forty-one years old; this was rather young for such an election. Two years later, he was chosen as the recipient of the prestigious Comstock Prize^[12] for Physics by the NAS, and was the recipient of many other awards and honors.

The ensuing publicity generated by the "invention of the transistor" often thrust Shockley to the fore, much to the chagrin of Bardeen and Brattain. Bell Labs management, however, consistently presented all three inventors as a team. Though Shockley would correct the record where reporters gave him sole credit for the invention,^[13] he eventually infuriated and alienated Bardeen and Brattain, and he essentially blocked the two from working on the junction transistor. Bardeen began pursuing a theory for superconductivity and left Bell Labs in 1951. Brattain refused to work with Shockley further and was assigned to another group. Neither Bardeen nor Brattain had much to do with the development of the transistor beyond the first year after its invention.^[14]

Shockley's abrasive management style caused him to be passed over for executive promotion at Bell Labs, which also felt he was a greater asset as a research scientist and theorist. Shockley wanted the power and profit he felt he deserved. He took a leave from Bell Labs in 1953 and moved back to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for four months as a visiting professor.

Shockley Semiconductor[link]

Eventually he was given a chance to run his own company, as a division of a Caltech friend's successful electronics firm. In 1955, Shockley joined Beckman Instruments, where he was appointed as the Director of Beckman's newly founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California. With his prestige and Beckman's capital, Shockley attempted to lure some of his former colleagues from Bell Labs to his new lab, but none of them would join him. Instead, Shockley started scouring universities for the brightest graduates to build a company from scratch, one that would be run "his way".

"His way" could generally be summed up as domineering and increasingly paranoid. In one well-known incident, he claimed that a secretary's cut thumb was the result of a malicious act and he demanded lie detector tests to find the culprit.^[15] It was later demonstrated the cut was caused by a broken thumbtack on the office door, and the research staff was henceforth increasingly hostile. Meanwhile, his demands to create a new and technically difficult device (originally called a Shockley diode and now modified to become the thyristor), meant that the project was moving very slowly.

In late 1957, eight of Shockley's researchers, who called themselves "The Traitorous Eight," resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors. ^[16] After a meeting with Sherman Fairchild and procurement of seed capital from Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, they started Fairchild Semiconductor. "The Traitorous Eight" included Robert Noyce and Gordon E. Moore, who would later leave Fairchild and form Intel Corporation. Other offspring companies of Fairchild Semiconductor include National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices.

Thus, over the course of just 20 years, a mere eight of Shockley’s former employees gave forth 65 new enterprises, which then went on to do the same....^[17] Shockley Semiconductor and these companies formed the nucleus of what became Silicon Valley, which revolutionized the world of electronics and, indeed, the world itself.

While Shockley was still trying to get his three-state device to work, Fairchild and Texas Instruments both introduced the first integrated circuits, making Shockley's work in that area essentially superfluous. Shockley did manage to get the three-state device to work but failed to make it commercially successful.

In 1961 he and Hans Queisser derived the maximal theoretical efficiency of a simple solar cell, subsequently known as the Shockley-Queisser limit.

The firm was sold in 1960 and became a part of ITT in 1968.

Sidelights[link]

Shockley was popular as speaker, lecturer, and an amateur magician. He once magically produced a bouquet of roses at the end of his address before the American Physical Society. He was also famed in his early years for his elaborate practical jokes.^[18] He became an accomplished rock climber, going often to the Shawangunks in the Hudson River Valley, where he pioneered a route across an overhang, known to this day as "Shockley's Ceiling."^[8]

He was first to propose a lognormal distribution to model the creation process for scientific research papers.^[19]

He was an atheist.^[20]

Later years[link]

Shockley separated from his wife Jean in the spring of 1954, divorcing her that summer. Shortly after forming Shockley Semiconductor, on November 23, 1955, Shockley married Emmy Lanning, a teacher of psychiatric nursing from upstate New York. They had a very happy marriage that lasted until his death in 1989.

In July 1961, Shockley, his wife, and son Dick were involved in a serious automobile accident: Shockley required several months to recover from his injuries.

When Shockley was eased out of the directorship of Shockley Semiconductor, he joined Stanford University, where he was appointed the Alexander M. Poniatoff Professor of Engineering and Applied Science.^[21]

Shockley's last patent was granted in 1968, for a rather complex semiconductor device.

Statements about populations and genetics[link]

Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of race, intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was important to the genetic future of the human species, and came to describe it as the most important work of his career, even though expressing such politically unpopular views risked damaging his reputation. When asked why he seemed to take positions associated with both the political right and left, Shockley explained that his goal was "the application of scientific ingenuity to the solution of human problems."^[22]

Shockley argued that the higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would ultimately lead to a decline in civilization.^[23] Shockley advocated that the scientific community should seriously investigate questions of heredity, intelligence, and demographic trends, and suggest policy changes if he was proven right.^[24]

Although Shockley was concerned about dysgenic effects among both blacks and whites, he perceived the situation among blacks as more problematic. According to 1970 US Census, unskilled and skilled whites had on average 3.7 and 2.3 children, respectively, whereas the corresponding numbers for blacks were 5.4 and 1.9.^[25] Shockley expressed concern that the black population would become progressively less intelligent, countering all the gains that had been made by the Civil Rights movement. Shockley's views on this topic, expressed in his publications and lectures, were based in part on the work of Cyril Burt who was discredited by the scientific community in the 1970s, known as the Burt Affair, but was later vindicated by the works of Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton in 1997 when they too showed very similar results as Burt. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.

He donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank founded by Robert Klark Graham in hopes of spreading humanity's best genes. The bank, called by the media the "Nobel Prize sperm bank," claimed to have three Nobel Prize-winning donors, though Shockley was the only one to publicly acknowledge his donation to the sperm bank. However, Shockley's controversial views brought the Repository for Germinal Choice notable publicity and may have discouraged other Nobel Prize winners from donating sperm.^[26]

While the "Nobel sperm bank" issue was in the news, Playboy magazine published in its August 1980 issue a lengthy interview with Shockley. Although Hugh Hefner, the magazine's publisher, was not particularly sympathetic to Shockley's views, this in-depth interview nonetheless provided an opportunity for the professor to clarify his views on eugenics and the social implications of racial differences, and to defend his side of the controversy to a wider audience. In 1981 he filed a libel suit against the Atlanta Constitution after a reporter called him a "Hitlerite" and compared his racial views to those of the Nazis. Shockley won the suit but received only US$1 in damages.^[27][28] Shockley's biographer sums this up as saying that the statement was defamatory, but Shockley's reputation was not worth much by the time the trial reached a verdict.^[29]

In his later years Shockley took several precautions to improve his interactions with the media, to little avail. He taped his telephone conversations with reporters, and then sent the transcript to them by registered mail. At one point he toyed with the idea of making them take a simple quiz on his work before discussing the subject with them. His habit of saving all his papers, even laundry lists, provides abundant documentation for researchers on his life.^[30]

Edgar G. Epps argued that "William Shockley's position lends itself to racist interpretations".^[31] Daniel J. Kevles mentioned that Shockley "invited ridicule as a racist and biological ignoramus".^[32][33] Anthropologist and eugenics advocate Roger Pearson^[34] has defended Shockley, arguing that Shockley’s views were misrepresented in the popular media by journalists who lacked a proper understanding of the topics Shockley wrote about, and that his views were in fact shared by many other scholars who were reluctant to publicly defend him due to fear of being attacked themselves.^[35]

Death[link]

He died in 1989 of prostate cancer.^[1]

By the time of his death he was almost completely estranged from most of his friends and family, except his wife. His children are reported to have learned of his death only through the print media.^[36]

A group of about 30 colleagues, who have met on and off since 1956, met at Stanford in 2002 to reminisce about their time with Shockley and his central role in sparking the information technology revolution, its organizer saying "Shockley is the man who brought silicon to Silicon Valley."^[37]

Honors[link]

• He received the Comstock Prize in Physics of the National Academy of Sciences in 1953.^[38]
• He was the first recipient of the Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize of the American Physical Society in 1953.
• Shockley was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, along with Bardeen and Brattain. In his Nobel lecture, he gave full credit to Brattain and Bardeen as the inventors of the point-contact transistor. The three of them, together with wives and guests, had a rather raucous late-night champagne-fueled party to celebrate together.
• Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1963.
• He received honorary science doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Gustavus Adolphus Colleges in Minnesota.
• Maurice Liebman Memorial Prize from the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)) in 1980.
• Shockley was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
• In 2011, he was listed at #3 on the Boston Globe's MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas in the 150 year history of MIT.

Patents[link]

Shockley was granted over ninety US patents. Some notable ones are:

• US 2502488  "Semiconductor Amplifier". Applied for on Sept. 24, 1948; his first granted patent involving transistors.
• US 2569347  "Circuit element utilizing semiconductive material" His earliest applied for (June 26, 1948) patent involving transistors.
• US 2655609  "Bistable Circuits". Applied for on July 22, 1952; Used in computers.
• US 2787564  "Forming Semiconductive Devices by Ionic Bombardment". Applied for on Oct. 28, 1954; The diffusion process for implantation of impurities.
• US 3031275  "Process for Growing Single Crystals". Applied for on Feb. 20, 1959; Improvements on process for production of basic materials.
• US 3053635  "Method of Growing Silicon Carbide Crystals". Applied for on Sept. 26, 1960; Exploring other semiconductors.

Bibliography[link]

Prewar scientific articles by Shockley[link]

• An Electron Microscope for Filaments: Emission and Adsorption by Tungsten Single Crystals, R. P. Johnson and W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 49, 436 - 440 (1936).
• Optical Absorption by the Alkali Halides, J. C. Slater and W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 50, 705 - 719 (1936).
• Electronic Energy Bands in Sodium Chloride, William Shockley, Phys. Rev. 50, 754 - 759 (1936).
• The Empty Lattice Test of the Cellular Method in Solids, W. Shockley, Phys. Rev. 52, 866 - 872 (1937).
• On the Surface States Associated with a Periodic Potential, William Shockley, Phys. Rev. 56, 317 - 323 (1939).
• The Self-Diffusion of Copper, J. Steigman, W. Shockley and F. C. Nix, Phys. Rev. 56, 13 - 21 (1939).

Books by Shockley[link]

• Shockley, William – Electrons and holes in semiconductors, with applications to transistor electronics, Krieger (1956) ISBN 0-88275-382-7.
• Shockley, William and Gong, Walter A – Mechanics Charles E. Merrill, Inc. (1966).
• Shockley, William and Pearson, Roger – Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems Scott-Townsend (1992) ISBN 1-878465-03-1.

Books about Shockley[link]

• Joel N. Shurkin; Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2006) ISBN 1-4039-8815-3
• Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson; Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age. New York: Norton (1997) ISBN 0-393-31851-6 pbk.
• Roger Pearson; Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Washington DC: Scott Townsend Publishers (1992) ISBN 1-878465-26-0 pbk.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Shockley

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Shockley

• National Academy of Sciences biography
• Nobel biography
• Nobel Lecture
• PBS biography
• Gordon Moore. Biography of William Shockley Time Magazine
• Interview with Shockley biographer Joel Shurkin
• History of the transistor
• Simulation of a BJT in the Common Emitter Circuit
• Bipolar Transistors - The Transistor as a Switch - Active Region
• Lessons In Electric Circuits – Bipolar Junction Transistors
• EncycloBEAMia – Bipolar Junction Transistor
• Shockley and Bardeen-Brattain patent disputes
• Series of Slate.com Articles on the controversial sperm bank
• The genius factory
• William Shockley vs. Francis Cress-Welsing (Tony Brown Show, 1974)
• A Shockley website (shockleytransistor.com) has been established, using the company name, to honor Shockley and those who first processed silicon in Silicon Valley.
• Works by or about William Shockley in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

The traitorous eight, as they became known, are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to form Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.^[1][2] More neutral terms include the "Fairchild eight" and the "Shockley eight."^[3] They have sometimes been called "Fairchildren," although this term has also been used to refer either to Fairchild alumni or to its spinoff companies.^[4]

The eight are Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Sheldon Roberts.

History [link]

According to authors Joseph Blasi, Douglas Kruse, and Aaron Bernstein, these eight men left because they did not agree with William Shockley's authoritarian managerial style and his practice of expecting a certain result instead of letting the research guide the process.^[5] There is no record of Shockley ever using the term "traitorous eight," and his wife denied that he ever used it.^[6]

The eight employees went to Arnold Beckman and asked him to replace Shockley. Beckman tried to find a new manager and left Shockley as a director with limited powers. As the search dragged on, it became apparent that Beckman could not find a replacement, so he restored Shockley's responsibilities. The eight men then resigned and signed a research contract with Fairchild Camera and Instrument to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

Their entrepreneurial desires did not end with Fairchild. Like many other Fairchild employees, seven of the eight went on to found various spinoff companies. These spinoffs and their founders are sometimes known as "Fairchildren". The most successful were Noyce and Moore, founders of Intel, and Kleiner, co-founder of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm. Additionally, Roberts, Hoerni and Last founded what later became Teledyne, while Blank co-founded Xicor. Grinich became a professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

Fairchildren[link]

The term "Fairchildren" refers to the seminal role that Fairchild Semiconductor played in spawning spin-off companies in Silicon Valley. It is a play on the words "Fairchild" and "children," the latter referring to the formation of (unofficial) spin-off companies from a parent company.

In research, reporting and popular lore related to Silicon Valley, the term "Fairchildren" has been variously used to refer to:

1. The corporate spin-offs created by former employees of Fairchild Semiconductor. This is the usage of historian Leslie Berlin in her 2001 journal article,^[7] in her 2001 doctoral dissertation,^[8] and in her biography of Robert Noyce.^[9]
2. The founders of such firms. This is the earliest usage, e.g. Tom Wolfe's 1983 profile of Noyce^[10] or a 5,000-word profile of Silicon Valley^[11] in 1999.
3. Former Fairchild Semiconductor employees, as in a 1988 New York Times article.^[12]
4. The original founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, more commonly known as the "traitorous eight". This has been used by a PBS website and a book on stock options.^[13]

Note that there is an overlap among the last three categories, as some of the Fairchild eight (such as Noyce and Eugene Kleiner) left Fairchild to form other companies.

Honors[link]

In May, 2011, the California Historical Society gave the “Legends of California Award” to the eight. Blank, Last, Moore, and Roberts' son Dave attended the event in San Francisco.^[14][15]

References[link]

External links[link]

• 1999 Computerworld interview with Eugene Kleiner, Julius Blank and Jay Last
• The Accidental Entrepreneur, (Gordon E. Moore): From Caltech to Intel
• Transistorized! (PBS)

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Frances Cress Welsing
Born	1935 Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	writer, and psychiatrist

Frances Cress Welsing (born March 18, 1935 in Chicago) is an African American psychiatrist practicing in Washington, D.C.. She is noted for her "Cress Theory of Color Confrontation", which explores the practice of white supremacy. She is the author of The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991).^[1][2]

Views[link]

Cress Welsing states that a system is practiced by the global white minority, on both conscious and unconscious levels, to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary. According to Cress Welsing, this system attacks people of color, particularly people of African descent, in the nine major areas of people's activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war.^[2] Cress Welsing believes that it is imperative that people of color, especially people of African descent, understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it and bring true justice to planet Earth.^[1]

In The Isis Papers she postulates the melanin theory, a hypothesis that has been called pseudoscientific and black supremacist,^[3] that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants. She posits that because of this defective mutation, they may have been forcibly expelled from Africa, among other possibilities.^[4] Welsing proposes that, because it is so easy for pure whiteness to be genetically lost during interracial breeding, light-skinned peoples developed an aggressive colonial urge and their societies dominated others militarily in order to preserve this light-skinned purity. Welsing ascribes certain inherent and behavioral differences between black and white people to a "melanin deficiency" in white people. Welsing proposes what she calls a "functional definition of racism":

Functional Definition Of Racism = White Supremacy = Apartheid: As a black behavioral scientist and practicing psychiatrist, my own functional definition of racism (white supremacy) is as follows: "Racism (white supremacy) is the local and global power system and dynamic, structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action, and emotional response, as conducted, simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet Earth - a planet upon which the vast and overwhelming majority of people are classified as nonwhite (black, brown, red and yellow) by white skinned people, and all of the nonwhite people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white skin people."^[5]

Welsing discusses her "Unified Field Theory Psychiatry" as a broader framework, encompassing biology, psychology, and physics, as prerequisite to understanding the etiology of a unified field of energy phenomena, specifically the "behavior-energy" underlying racial conflict. She states that her position is more analogous to the "determinist" model of physicist Albert Einstein, than to the "indeterminacy" theories of Max Born and Werner Heisenberg. Furthermore, she asserts that both homosexuality and sexism are necessarily derived from this behavior-energy system.

As a psychiatrist, a large part of Welsing's writings also pertain to Freudian theory, and particularly to analysis of the meaning of symbols. She presents an extensive interpretation of broad categories of symbolic objects: guns and weapons, Christ and the Holy Cross, ball games, boxing, smoking objects, paper money and gold.

Other essays concern the meaning and symbolism of rape and of justifiable homicide. Her analysis of mass-homicide, or genocide, concludes that the Holocaust and systematic destruction of European Jewry was caused by white fear of genetic annihilation by "non-Aryan" peoples. Therefore she believes that the function of Jews as a "Chosen People" is to illustrate to all non-white ethnicities that they are in peril of extermination:

No matter how much you may shrink the size of your nose, no matter how many doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, scholars you may produce, no matter how many Einsteins, Freuds, Marxes, or Rubensteins you produce, no matter how much money, diamonds, and gold you may obtain, if you are classified as "non-white" under the conditions of white supremacy domination, when the hammer of white supremacy falls, you will be under that hammer.

According to Welsing, various cultural practices express white people's sense of their own inferiority:

On both St. Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests "chocolate with nuts", the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male…. Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.^[6]

Welsing further contends that chauvinism of white males is rooted in envy, "because Black is always genetically dominant to white":

...I have said all of the above to state that, yes, there is envy in the white supremacy culture, but it began with the white male's envy of the genetic power residing in the Black male's testicles and phallus. Perhaps there was also envy of the comparatively longer length of the Black phallus. The sense of his relative genetic weakness and inferiority compared to Black males (because Black is always genetically dominant to white) caused the white male to attempt to project "inferiority" on white females as well.^[7]

Cress Welsing has been criticized for stating that black male homosexuality is consciously imposed on the black man by the white man to destroy the black family, that black homosexuality is a sign of weakness and that homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in other areas such as economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.^[8]

Film appearance[link]

Cress Welsing made a rare screen appearance when she starred in the documentary 500 Years Later (2005) starring Maulana Karenga, Muhammed Shareef, Hakim Adi, Kimani Nehusi, Paul Robeson Jr, Nelson George, and many more. The directed by Owen Alik Shahadah and written by M.K. Asante, Jr.

Works[link]

• The Isis (Yssis) papers. Chicago: Third World Press, c1992 (3rd printing). ISBN 0-88378-103-4, ISBN 0-88378-104-2.

Cress Welsing made a rare screen appearance when she starred in the documentary 500 Years Later (2005) starring Maulana Karenga, Muhammed Shareef, Hakim Adi, Kimani Nehusi, Paul Robeson Jr, Nelson George, and many more. The documentary was directed by Owen Alik Shahadah and written by M.K. Asante, Jr.

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ortiz de Montellano, B. (2001) Magic Melanin: Spreading Scientific Illiteracy to Minorities.

External links[link]

• Interview with Francis Cress Welsing

See also[link]

• Melanin Theory
• Black supremacy
• Afrocentrism

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There are many people in history who are commonly appended with the phrase "the Great", or who were called that or an equivalent phrase in their own language. Other languages have their own suffixes such as e Bozorg and e azam in Persian and Urdu respectively.

In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to be a colloquial version of the Old Persian title "Great King". This title was first used by the conqueror Cyrus II of Persia.^[1]

The Persian title was inherited by Alexander III of Macedon (336–323 BC) when he conquered the Persian Empire, and the epithet "Great" eventually became personally associated with him. The first reference (in a comedy by Plautus)^[2] assumes that everyone knew who "Alexander the Great" was; however, there is no earlier evidence that Alexander III of Macedon was called "the Great".

The early Seleucid kings, who succeeded Alexander in Persia, used "Great King" in local documents, but the title was most notably used for Antiochus the Great (223–187 BC).

Later rulers and commanders began to use the epithet "the Great" as a personal name, like the Roman general Pompey. Others received the surname retrospectively, like the Carthaginian Hanno and the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. Once the surname gained currency, it was also used as an honorific surname for people without political careers, like the philosopher Albert the Great.

As there are no objective criteria for "greatness", the persistence of later generations in using the designation greatly varies. For example, Louis XIV of France was often referred to as "The Great" in his lifetime but is rarely called such nowadays, while Frederick II of Prussia is still called "The Great". A later Hohenzollern - Wilhelm I - was often called "The Great" in the time of his grandson Wilhelm II, but rarely later.

Rulers[link]

• Abbas I of Persia (1571–1629), Shah of Iran
• Akbar (1542–1605), ruler of the Mughal Empire of South Asia, mainly India
• Alain I of Albret (1440–1522), French aristocrat
• Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), King of Macedonia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, and all of Mesopotamia
• Alexander I of Georgia (1386–1446), King of Georgia
• Alfonso III of León (c. 848-910), King of León, Galicia and Asturias
• Alfred the Great (848/849-899), King of Wessex
• Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BC), ruler of the Seleucid Empire
• Ashoka the Great (c. 304–232 BC), Indian emperor of the Maurya dynasty
• Ashot I of Iberia “the Great”(died 826/830), presiding prince of Iberia (modern Georgia),
• Askia Mohammad I (c. 1442–1538), ruler of the Songhai Empire
• Bhumibol Adulyadej (born 1927), King of Thailand
• Bolesław I Chrobry (967-1025), sometimes called "the Great", first King of Poland
• Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the following section)
• Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (1736–1809), founder and ruler of the Rattanakosin Kingdom (in what is now Thailand)
• Cnut the Great (c. 985 or 995-1035), King of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden
• Casimir III the Great (1310–1370), King of Poland
• Catherine the Great (1729–1796), Empress of Russia
• Chandragupta II (reigned 375-413/415), also known as Vikramaditya, ruler of the Gupta empire in India
• Charlemagne (died 814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans
• Chulalongkorn (1853–1910), King of Siam (now Thailand)
• Chlothar II (584-629), King of Neustria and King of the Franks
• Conrad, Margrave of Meissen (c. 1097-1157), Margrave of Meissen
• Constantine I (c. 272-337), Roman emperor
• Cyaxares the Great (c. 625-585 BC), third king of Media
• Cyrus the Great (c. 600 BC or 576 BC–530 BC), founder and ruler of the Persian or Achaemenid Empire
• Darius the Great (550 – 486 BC), third ruler of the Persian Empire
• Devapala (died 850), ruler of the Pala Empire in the Indian subcontinent
• Dionysius I, Greek tyrant of Syracuse^[3]
• Ferdinand I of León and Castile (c. 1015–1065), King of León and Count of Castile
• Frederick the Great (1712–1786), King of Prussia
• Genghis Khan (1162?-1227), founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire
• Gero (c. 900–965), ruler of Marca Geronis, a very large march in Europe
• Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594–1632), King of Sweden, founder of the Swedish Empire, and noted military leader
• Gwanggaeto the Great, King of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea^[4][5]
• Hanno the Great, the name of three leaders of Carthage, in the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd centuries BC
• Henry I, Duke of Burgundy (946–1002)
• Henry IV of France (1553–1610), King of France and King of Navarre
• Herod the Great (73/74 BC-4 BC), King of Judea
• Hugh the Great (898-956), Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris
• Hugh Magnus of France (1007–1025), co-King of France
• Hugh I, Count of Vermandois (1057–1101)
• Humphrey I de Bohun (died c. 1123), Anglo-Norman aristocrat
• Ivan III of Russia (1440–1505), Tsar of Russia
• John I of Portugal (1358–1433), King of Portugal and the Algarve
• John II of Aragon (1398–1479), King of Aragon and, through his wife, King of Navarre
• Justinian I (483-565), Byzantine Emperor
• Kamehameha I (c. 1758-1819), first King of Hawai'i
• Kanishka (died c. 127), ruler of the Kushan Empire in Central Asia and parts of India
• Kvirike III of Kakheti (1010–1029), King of Kakheti in eastern Georgia
• Kublai Khan (1215–1294), Mongol ruler in the 13th century and Emperor of China; founder of the Yuan Dynasty
• Llywelyn the Great (c. 1172–1240), Prince of Gwynedd and de facto ruler of most of Wales
• Louis I of Hungary (1326–1382), King of Hungary, Croatia and Poland
• Mangrai the Great (1238–1317), Lanna, northern Thailand
• Emperor Meiji (1852–1912), Emperor of Japan
• Mircea I of Wallachia (1355–1418)
• Mithridates II of Parthia (died 88 BC), ruler of the Parthian Empire (in present day Iran)
• Mithridates VI of Pontus (134 BC–63 BC), ruler of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom
• Mstislav I of Kiev (1076–1132), Grand Prince of Kievan Rus
• Naresuan (1555–1605), King of Ayutthaya
• Narai (1633–1688), King of Ayutthaya (in what is now modern Thailand)
• Odo the Great (died c. 735), Duke of Aquitaine
• Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912-973)
• K'inich Janaab' Pakal (603-683), ruler of the Mayan city-state of Palenque
• Parakramabahu I of Polonnaruwa (1123–1186), King of Sri Lanka
• Peter Krešimir IV of Croatia (died 1075), King of Croatia
• Peter the Great (1672–1725), Tsar of Russia
• Peter III of Aragon (1239–1285), King of Aragon and King of Sicily
• Pompey (106 BC-48 BC), military and political leader of the late Roman Republic, rival of Julius Caesar
• Radama I (1793–1828), first king of greater Madagascar
• Raja Raja Chola I (c. 947-1014), Indian emperor of the Cholas.^[6][7][8]
• Rajendra Chola I (reigned 1014–1044), Tamil King of India
• Ramesses II (reigned 1279 BC – 1213 BC), considered the greatest pharaoh of Ancient Egypt
• Ram Khamhaeng (around 1237 to 1247-1298), King of Sukhothai (in present day Thailand)
• Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona (1082–1131), also Count of Provence and various other counties
• Rhodri the Great (c. 820–878), King of Gwynedd (in present day Wales)
• Roman the Great (after 1160-1205), Grand Prince of Kiev
• Saladin (c. 1138-1193), Kurdish Sultan of Egypt and Syria, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, and victor over the Crusaders
• Samudragupta (c. 335–375), ruler of the Gupta empire in the Indian subcontinent
• Sancho III of Navarre (c. 992-1035), King of Kingdom of Navarre
• Sargon of Akkad (died c. 2215 BC), ruler of the Akkadian Empire
• Sejong the Great (1397–1450), Korean king^[9]
• Shapur II (309-379), king of the Sassanid Empire, Persia
• Simeon I of Bulgaria (864/865-927), ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire
• Stephen III of Moldavia (1433–1504), Prince of Moldavia (Romania)
• Stephen Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia (c. 1308-1355), King of Serbia and Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks
• Taksin (1734–1782), King of the Thonburi Kingdom (Thailand)
• Tamar (1160-1123), Queen of the Georgian Empire
• Timur (1336–1405), better known as Tamerlane, founder of the Timurid Dynasty
• Theobald II, Count of Champagne (1090–1151), Count of Blois and of Chartres as Theobald IV, Count of Champagne and of Brie
• Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths, regent of the Visigoths and a viceroy of the Byzantine Empire
• Theodosius I (347-395), Roman emperor
• Tigranes the Great (140-55 BC), Emperor of Armenia
• Tiridates III of Armenia (285-339), King of Armenia
• Umar (c. 586 to 590–644), second caliph of the Muslim Empire
• Valdemar I of Denmark (1131–1182), King of Denmark
• Valentinian I (364-375), Roman Emperor
• Vladimir I of Kiev (c. 958-1015), ruler of Kievan Rus
• Vytautas (c. 1350-1430), archduke of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy
• William I, Count of Burgundy (1020–1087), Count of Burgandy and Mâcon
• William V, Duke of Aquitaine (969-1030), also Count of Poitou
• Xerxes I (519-465 BC), King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia)
• Yu the Great (c. 2200-2100 BC), legendary ruler in ancient China

Religious figures[link]

• Abraham the Great of Kashkar (ca. 492-586), monk and saint of the Assyrian Church of the East
• Abraham Kidunaia (died c. 366, hermit, priest, and Christian saint of Mesopotamia
• Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280), medieval German philosopher and theologian
• Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), early Christian saint of Egypt
• Babai the Great (c. 551–628), Assyrian church leader
• Basil of Caesarea (330-379), Greek bishop and theologian
• Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the previous section)
• Euthymius the Great (377-473), abbot and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint
• Gertrude the Great (1256-c. 1302), German Benedictine, mystic, theologian and Roman Catholic saint
• Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604)
• Hiyya the Great, 3rd-century rabbi, Palestine
• Pope John Paul II (1920–2005)
• Pope Leo I (c. 391 or 400-461)
• Macarius of Egypt (c. 300-391), Egyptian hermit
• Pope Nicholas I (c. 800-867)
• Photius I of Constantinople (c. 810–c. 893), Eastern Orthodox saint and Patriarch of Constantinople
• William of Maleval (died 1157), founder of the Catholic congregation of Williamites

Other[link]

• Beli Mawr, a figure in medieval Welsh literature and genealogies
• Emmy the Great, folk singer
• Matteo Rosso the Great, Roman politician and father of Pope Nicholas III
• Prokop the Great, Hussite general in Bohemia

See also[link]

• Epithet
• List of monarchs by nickname
• List of nicknames of European Royalty and Nobility: G-I
• James, son of Zebedee, also known as James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus
• Ajax (mythology), called Ajax the Greater
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whose common honorific "Mahatma" means "Great Soul"

Notes[link]

Vyacheslav Molotov Вячеслав Молотов
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
In office 16 August 1942 – 29 June 1957
Premier	Joseph Stalin Georgy Malenkov Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded by	Nikolai Voznesensky
Succeeded by	Nikolai Bulganin
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 5 March 1953 – 1 June 1956
Premier	Georgy Malenkov Nikolai Bulganin
Preceded by	Andrey Vyshinsky
Succeeded by	Dmitri Shepilov
In office 3 May 1939 – 4 March 1949
Premier	Joseph Stalin
Preceded by	Maxim Litvinov
Succeeded by	Andrey Vyshinsky
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union
In office 19 December 1930 – 6 May 1941
First Deputies	Valerian Kuibyshev Nikolai Voznesensky
Preceded by	Alexei Rykov
Succeeded by	Joseph Stalin
Responsible Secretary of the Russian Communist Party
In office March 1921 – April 1922
Preceded by	Nikolay Krestinsky
Succeeded by	Joseph Stalin (as General Secretary)
Full member of the Presidium
In office 1 January 1926 – 29 June 1957
Candidate member of the Politburo
In office 16 March 1921 – 1 January 1926
Member of the Secretariat
In office 16 March 1921 – 21 December 1930
Member of the Orgburo
In office 16 March 1921 – 21 December 1930
Personal details
Born	Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin 9 March 1890(1890-03-09) Kukarka, Russian Empire
Died	8 November 1986(1986-11-08) (aged 96) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Soviet
Nationality	Russian
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)	Polina Zhemchuzhina
Religion	None (Atheist)

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Russian: Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов; 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier in Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity.

Molotov was the principal Soviet signatory of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), after Britain and France repeatedly failed to join the Soviets in an anti-Nazi alliance, was involved in post-war negotiations where he became noted for his diplomatic skills, and was a signatory of the Politburo resolution authorising the Katyn massacre. Following the aftermath of World War II (Great Patriotic War) Molotov kept his place, until 1949, as a leading Soviet diplomat and politician. In March 1949, after losing Stalin's favour, he lost the foreign affairs ministry to Andrei Vyshinsky. Molotov's relationship with Stalin deteriorated further, with Stalin complaining about Molotov's mistakes in a speech to the 19th Party Congress. However, after Stalin's death in 1953 Molotov was staunchly opposed to Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation policy. He defended his policies and the legacy of Stalin until his death in 1986, and harshly criticized Stalin's successors, especially Nikita Khrushchev.

Early life and career (1890–1930)[link]

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin (Russian: Вячеслав Михайлович Скря́бин) in the village of Kukarka (now Sovetsk in Kirov Oblast), the son of a shop clerk. Contrary to a commonly repeated error, he was not related to the composer Alexander Scriabin.^[1] He was educated at a secondary school in Kazan, and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1906. He took the pseudonym Molotov (from the Russian molot, "hammer") for his political work.^[2] His other party nickname was 'stone arse', owing to his long hours at desks. (He once announced he was taking a 13 minute nap and woke up exactly 13 minutes later).^[3] He was arrested in 1909 and spent two years in exile in Vologda. In 1911 he enrolled at the St Petersburg Polytechnic, and also joined the editorial staff of Pravda, the underground Bolshevik newspaper of which Joseph Stalin was editor. In 1915 Molotov was again arrested and deported to Irkutsk, but in 1916 he escaped and returned to the capital.^[4]

Molotov became a member of the Bolshevik Party's committee in Petrograd in 1916. When the February Revolution occurred in 1917, he was one of the few Bolsheviks of any standing in the capital. Under his direction Pravda took to the "left" to oppose the Provisional Government formed after the revolution. When Joseph Stalin returned to the capital, he reversed Molotov's line;^[5] but when the party leader, Vladimir Lenin, arrived, he overruled Stalin. Despite this, Molotov became a protégé of and close adherent to Stalin, an alliance to which he owed his later prominence.^[6] Molotov became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee which planned the October Revolution, which effectively brought the Bolsheviks to power.^[7]

In 1918, Molotov was sent to Ukraine to take part in the civil war then breaking out. Since he was not a military man, he took no part in the fighting. In 1920, he became secretary to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Bolshevik Party. Lenin recalled him to Moscow in 1921, elevating him to full membership of the Central Committee and Orgburo, and putting him in charge of the party secretariat. He was voted in as a non-voting member of the Politburo in 1921, and held the office of Responsible Secretary. His Responsible Secretaryship was criticised both by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, with Lenin noting his "shameful bureaucratism" and stupid behaviour.^[1] On the advice of Molotov and Nikolai Bukharin the Central Committee decided to reduce Lenin's work hours.^[8] In 1922, Stalin became General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party with Molotov as the de facto Second Secretary. As a young follower Molotov admired Stalin, but was open in criticism of him.^[9] Under Stalin's patronage, Molotov became a member of the Politburo in 1926.^[6]

During the power struggles which followed Lenin's death in 1924, Molotov remained a loyal supporter of Stalin against his various rivals: first Leon Trotsky, later Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev and finally Nikolai Bukharin. Molotov became a leading figure in the "Stalinist centre" of the party, which also included Kliment Voroshilov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze.^[10] Trotsky and his supporters underestimated Molotov, as did many others. Trotsky called him "mediocrity personified", whilst Molotov himself pedantically corrected comrades referring to him as 'Stone Arse' by saying that Lenin had actually dubbed him 'Iron Arse'.^[1] However, this outward dullness concealed a sharp mind and great administrative talent. He operated mainly behind the scenes and cultivated an image of a colourless bureaucrat – for example, he was the only Bolshevik leader who always wore a suit and tie.^[11] In 1928 Molotov replaced Nikolai Uglanov as First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party and held that position until 15 August 1929.^[12] In a lengthy address to the Central Committee in 1929, Molotov told the members that the Soviet government would initiate a compulsory collectivisation campaign to solve the agrarian backwardness of Soviet agriculture.^[13]

Premiership (1930–1941)[link]

A list from the Great Purge signed by Molotov, Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov

During the Central Committee plenum of 19 December 1930, Alexey Rykov, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (the equivalent of a Western head of government) was succeeded by Molotov.^[14] In this post, Molotov oversaw the Stalin regime's collectivisation of agriculture. He followed Stalin's line by using a combination of force and propaganda to crush peasant resistance to collectivisation, including the deportation of millions of kulaks (peasants with property) to labour camps. An enormous number of the deportees died from exposure and overwork.^[15] He signed the Law of Spikelets^[16] and personally led the Extraordinary Commission for Grain Delivery in Ukraine,^[17] which seized a reported 4.2 million tonnes of grain from the peasants during a widespread manmade famine (known in Ukraine as Holodomor).^[16] Contemporary historians estimate that between seven and eleven million people died, either of starvation or in labour camps,^[16] in the move to collectivise farms. Molotov also oversaw the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialisation.^[18]

Sergei Kirov, head of the Party organisation in Leningrad, was killed in 1934;^[19] some believed his death was ordered by Stalin. Kirov's death triggered a second crisis, the Great Purge.^[20] In 1938, out of the twenty-eight People's Commissars in Molotov's Government, twenty were executed on the orders of Molotov and Stalin.^[21] The purges were carried out by Stalin's successive police chiefs,^[22] Nikolai Yezhov was the chief organiser and Kliment Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich and Molotov were intimately involved in the processes.^[23] Stalin frequently required Molotov and other Politburo members to sign the death warrants of prominent purge victims, and Molotov always did so without question.^[24] There is no record of Molotov attempting to moderate the course of the purges or even to save individuals, as some other Soviet officials did. During the Great Purge, he personally approved 372 documented execution lists, more than any other Soviet official including Stalin. It is known that Molotov was one of few with whom Stalin openly discussed the purges.^[25] Although Molotov and Stalin signed a public decree in 1938 which disassociated them from the then ongoing Great Purge.^[26], in private, and even after Stalin's death, Molotov supported the Great Purge and the executions committed by his government.^[27]

Molotov at the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1939 with Stalin and Georgy Malenkov

Despite the great human cost,^[28] the Soviet Union under Molotov's nominal premiership made great strides in the adoption and widespread implementation of agrarian and industrial technology. In a document written by Molotov he noted how cannibalism and starvation were still serious problems even in 1937 in the Soviet Union. Andrey Vyshinsky, the Procurator General, even told Molotov personally of incidents involving mothers eating their newly-born children.^[29] The rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany precipitated the development of a modern armaments industry on the orders of the Soviet government.^[30] Ultimately, it was this arms industry, along with American Lend-Lease aid, which helped the Soviet Union to prevail in the World War II (Great Patriotic War).^[31] Set against this, the purges of the Red Army leadership, in which Molotov participated, weakened the Soviet Union's defence capacity and contributed to the military disasters of 1941 and 1942, which were mostly caused by unreadiness for war.^[32] The purges also led to the dismantling of privatised agriculture and its replacement by collectivised agriculture. This left a legacy of chronic agricultural inefficiencies and under-production which the Soviet regime never fully rectified.^[33]

Molotov was reported to be a vegetarian and teetotaler by American journalist John Gunther in 1938.^[34] However, Milovan Djilas claimed that he "drank more than Stalin" ^[35] and did not note his vegetarianism despite having several banquets with him.

Minister of Foreign Affairs (1939–1949)[link]

Molotov meets with Joachim von Ribbentrop before signing the German-Soviet non-aggression pact

In 1939, following the Munich Agreement and Hitler's subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Stalin believed that Britain and France would not be reliable allies against German expansion so instead sought to conciliate Nazi Germany.^[36] In May 1939 Maxim Litvinov, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was dismissed and Molotov was appointed to succeed him.^[37] Molotov was succeeded in his post as Premier by Stalin.^[38]

At first, Hitler rebuffed Soviet diplomatic hints that Stalin desired a treaty, but in early August 1939, Hitler authorised Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to begin serious negotiations. A trade agreement was concluded on 18 August, and on 22 August, Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to conclude a formal non-aggression treaty. Although the treaty is known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, it was Stalin and Hitler, and not Molotov and Ribbentrop, who decided the content of the treaty. The most important part of the agreement was the secret protocol, which provided for the partition of Poland, Finland and the Baltic States between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and for the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia (then part of Romania, now Moldova).^[37] This protocol gave Hitler the green light for his invasion of Poland, which began on 1 September.^[39] On 5 March 1940 Lavrentiy Beria gave Molotov, along with Anastas Mikoyan, Kliment Voroshilov and Stalin, a note ordering the execution of 25,700 Polish officers and anti-Soviets, in what has become known as the Katyn massacre.^[38]

Under the terms of the Pact, Hitler was, in effect, given authorisation to occupy two-thirds of Western Poland, as well as Lithuania. Molotov was given a free hand in relation to Finland. In the Soviet-Finnish War that ensued, a combination of fierce Finnish resistance and Soviet mismanagement resulted in Finland losing parts of its territory, but not its independence.^[40] The Pact was later amended to allocate Lithuania to the Soviet sphere in exchange for a more favourable border in Poland. These annexations led to massive suffering and loss of life in the countries occupied and partitioned by the two dictatorships.^[41]

Newspaper article from Pravda, 18 November 1940 depicting Molotov meeting German leader Adolf Hitler

In November 1940 Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to meet von Ribbentrop and Adolf Hitler (see German–Soviet Axis talks#Molotov travels to Berlin). In January 1941, the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden visited Turkey in an attempt to get the Turks to enter the war on the Allies' side. Though the purpose of Eden's visit was anti-German rather than anti-Soviet, Molotov assumed otherwise and in a series of conversations with the Italian Ambassador Augusto Rosso, Molotov claimed that the Soviet Union would soon be faced with an Anglo-Turkish invasion of the Crimea. The British historian D.C. Watt argued that on the basis of Molotov's statements to Rosso, it would appear that in early 1941, Stalin and Molotov viewed Britain rather than Germany as the principal threat.^[42]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact governed Soviet-German relations until June 1941 when Hitler, having occupied France and neutralised Britain, turned east and attacked the Soviet Union.^[43] Molotov was responsible for telling the Soviet people of the attack, when he instead of Stalin announced the war. His speech, broadcast by radio on 22 June, characterised the Soviet Union in a role similar to that articulated for Britain by Winston Churchill in his early wartime speeches.^[44] The State Defence Committee was established soon after Molotov's speech; Stalin was elected Chairman and Molotov was elected Deputy Chairman.^[45] Following the German invasion, Molotov conducted urgent negotiations with Britain and, later, the United States for wartime alliances. He took a secret flight to Glasgow, Scotland where he was greeted by Eden. From there he took a train to London to discuss with the British government the possibility of opening a second front against Germany. After signing the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942 on 26 May Molotov left for Washington, D.C., United States. Molotov met with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the United States, and ratified a Lend-Lease Treaty between the USSR and the US. Both the British and the United States government, albeit vaguely, promised to open up a second front against Germany. On his flight back to the USSR his plane was attacked by German fighters, and then later by Soviet fighters.^[46]

Potsdam Conference: Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Molotov, Joseph Stalin, William Daniel Leahy, James F. Byrnes, Harry S. Truman and others.

When Beria told Stalin about the Manhattan Project and its importance Stalin handpicked Molotov to be the man in charge of the Soviet atomic bomb project. However, under Molotov's leadership the bomb, and the project iself, developed very slowly and Molotov was replaced by Beria in 1944 on the advice of Igor Kurchatov.^[47] When Harry S. Truman, the American President, told Stalin that the Americans had created a bomb never seen before, Stalin related the conversation to Molotov and told him to speed up development. On Stalin's orders the Soviet government substantially increased investment in the project.^[48]

In a collaboration with Kliment Voroshilov, Molotov contributed both musically and lyrically to the 1944 version of the Soviet national anthem. Molotov asked the writers to include a line or two about peace. Molotov's and Voroshilov's role in the making of the new Soviet anthem was, in the words of historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, acting as music judges for Stalin.^[49]

Molotov accompanied Stalin to the Teheran Conference in 1943,^[50] the Yalta Conference in 1945^[51] and, following the defeat of Germany, the Potsdam Conference.^[52] He represented the Soviet Union at the San Francisco Conference, which created the United Nations.^[53] Even during the period of wartime alliance, Molotov was known as a tough negotiator and a determined defender of Soviet interests. From 1945 to 1947 Molotov took part in all four conferences of foreign ministers of the victorious states in World War II. In general, he was distinguished by an uncooperative attitude towards the Western powers. Molotov, on the direction of the Soviet government, condemned the Marshall Plan as imperialistic and claimed it was dividing Europe into two-camps, one capitalist and the other communist. In response, the Soviet Union, along with the other Eastern Bloc nations, initiated what is known as the Molotov Plan. The plan created several bilateral relations between the states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; and later evolved into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).^[54]

In the postwar period, Molotov's power began to decline. A clear sign of Molotov's precarious position was his inability to prevent the arrest in December 1948 for "treason" of his Jewish wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, whom Stalin had long distrusted.^[55] Molotov never stopped loving his wife, and it is said that he ordered his maids to make dinner for two every evening to remind him that, in his own words, "she suffered because of me".^[56] According to a close collaborator of Molotov, Vladimir Erofeev^[57] at the beginning of 1949 the Israel prime minister, Golda Meir, visited the Soviet Union; she met privately with Polina, who had been her schoolmate in St. Petersburg. Immediately afterward, Polina was arrested and accused of ties with Zionist organizations; she was kept one year in the Lubyanka, after which she was exiled for three years in an obscure Russian city. Molotov had no communication with her, save for the scant news that Berya, whom he loathed, told him. She was freed immediately after the death of Stalin.^[58] According to Erofeev, Molotov said of her: "She's not only beautiful and intelligent, the only woman minister in Soviet Union; she's also a real Bolshevik, a real soviet person." In 1949, Molotov was replaced as Foreign Minister by Andrey Vyshinsky, although retaining his position as First Deputy Premier and membership of the Politburo.^[56]

Post-war career (1949–1976)[link]

At the 19th Party Congress in 1952, Molotov was elected to the replacement for the Politburo, the Presidium, but was not listed among the members of the newly-established secret body known as the Bureau of the Presidium; indicating that he had fallen out of Stalin's favour.^[59] At the 19th Congress, Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan were said by Stalin to have committed grave mistakes, including the publication of a wartime speech by Winston Churchill favourable to the Soviet Union's war time efforts.^[60] Both Molotov and Mikoyan were falling out of favour rapidly, with Stalin telling Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov and Nikolai Bulganin that he did not want to see Molotov and Mikoyan around anymore. At his 73rd birthday, Stalin treated both with disgust.^[61] In his speech to the 20th Party Congress Khrushchev told the delegates that Stalin had plans for "finishing off" Molotov and Mikoyan in the aftermath of the 19th Congress.^[62]

Molotov (far left) with Khrushchev (second from right) and Premier Nikolai Bulganin (to the left of Khrushchev) in 1955 at a gala reception in Moscow for the visit of West German Chancellor Conrad Adenauer (centre).

Following Stalin's death, a realignment of the leadership was sought, in the course of which, Molotov's position was strengthened. Georgy Malenkov, Stalin's successor in the post of Premier, reappointed Molotov as Minister of Foreign Affairs on 5 March 1953.^[63] Although Molotov was seen as a likely successor to Stalin in the immediate aftermath of his death, he never sought to become leader of the Soviet Union.^[64] A Troika was established immediately after Stalin's death, consisting of Malenkov, Beria, and Molotov,^[65] but ended when Malenkov and Molotov deceived Beria.^[66] Molotov supported the removal and later the execution of Beria on the orders of Khrushchev.^[67] The new Party Secretary, Khrushchev, soon emerged as the new leader of the Soviet Union. He presided over a gradual domestic liberalisation and a thaw in foreign policy, shown by the reconciliation with Josip Broz Tito's government in Yugoslavia, which Stalin had expelled from the communist movement. Molotov, an old-guard Stalinist, seemed increasingly out of place in this new environment,^[68] but he represented the Soviet Union at the Geneva Conference of 1955.^[69]

The events which led to Molotov's downfall began in February 1956 when Khrushchev launched an unexpected denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Khrushchev attacked Stalin, both over the purges of the 1930s and the defeats of the early years of World War II, which he blamed on Stalin's over-trusting attitude to Hitler and the purges of the Red Army. Since Molotov was the most senior of Stalin's collaborators still alive and had played a leading role in the purges, it became obvious that Khrushchev's examination of the past would probably result in Molotov's fall from power. Consequently, he became the leader of an old guard which tried to overthrow Khrushchev.^[70]

In June 1956, Molotov was removed as Foreign Minister,^[71] and in June 1957, was expelled from the Presidium (Politburo) following a failed attempt to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary. Although Molotov's faction initially won a vote in the Presidium, 7-4, to remove Khrushchev, the latter refused to resign unless a Central Committee plenum decided so.^[72] In the plenum, which lasted from 22–29 June, Molotov and his faction were defeated.^[70] Eventually, he was banished as ambassador to the Mongolian People's Republic.^[72] In 1960, he was appointed Soviet representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was seen as a partial rehabilitation.^[73] However, after the 22nd Party Congress in 1961, during which Khrushchev carried out his de-Stalinisation campaign, including the removal of Stalin's body from Lenin's Mausoleum, Molotov (along with Lazar Kaganovich) was removed from all positions and expelled from the Communist Party.^[59] In 1962, all of Molotov's party documents and files were erased by the authorities.^[74]

In retirement, Molotov remained totally unrepentant about his role during Stalin's rule.^[75] He suffered a heart attack in January 1962. After the Sino-Soviet split, it was reported that he agreed with the criticisms made by Mao Zedong of the supposed "revisionism" of Khrushchev's policies. According to Roy Medvedev, Stalin's daughter Svetlana recalled Molotov and his wife telling her: "Your father was a genius. There's no revolutionary spirit around nowadays, just opportunism everywhere."^[76] China's our only hope. Only they have kept alive the revolutionary spirit".^[77]

Rehabilitation, death, beliefs and legacy[link]

Molotov's grave at Novodevichy cemetery

The first signs of a rehabilitation were seen during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, when information about him was again allowed inclusion in Soviet encyclopaedias. His connection, support and work in the Anti-Party Group was mentioned in encyclopaedias published in 1973 and 1974, but eventually disappeared altogether by the mid-to-late-1970s. Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko further rehabiliated Molotov; in 1984 Molotov was even allowed to seek a membership in the Communist Party.^[78] A collection of interviews with Molotov from 1985 was published in 1994 by Felix Chuev as Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Molotov died, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, on 8 November 1986. He was 96 years old at the time of his death, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.^[75]

Molotov, like Stalin, was pathologically mistrustful of others, and because of it, much crucial information disappeared. As Molotov once said "One should listen to them, but it is necessary to check up on them. The intelligence officer can lead you to a very dangerous position... There are many provocateurs here, there, and everywhere."^[79] Like Stalin, he never recognised the Cold War as an international event. He saw the Cold War as, more or less, the everyday conflict between communism and capitalism. He divided the capitalist countries into two groups, the "smart and dangerous imperialists" and the "fools".^[80] Molotov was also a staunch Russian nationalist, claiming that Russians, unlike the Hungarians, liked "to do things large-scale".^[81] Before his retirement, Molotov proposed establishing a socialist confederation with the People's Republic of China (PRC); Molotov believed socialist states were part of a bigger, supranational entity.^[82] In retirement, Molotov criticised Nikita Khrushchev for being a "right-wing deviationist".^[81]

The Molotov cocktail is a term coined by the Finns during the Winter War, as a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons.^[83] During the Winter War, the Soviet air force made extensive use of incendiaries and cluster bombs against Finnish troops and fortifications. When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that they were not bombing, but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Molotov bread baskets.^[84] Soon they responded by attacking advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails" which were "a drink to go with the food". According to Montefiore the Molotov cocktail was one part of Molotov's cult of personality which he highly disliked.^[83]

At the end of 1989, two years before the final collapse of the Soviet Union, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev's government formally denounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, acknowledging that the bloody annexation of the Baltic States and the partition of Poland had been illegal.^[85]

Winston Churchill in his wartime memoirs lists many meetings with Molotov. Acknowledging him as a "man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness", Churchill concluded: "In the conduct of foreign affairs, Mazarin, Talleyrand, Metternich, would welcome him to their company, if there be another world to which Bolsheviks allow themselves to go."^[86]

See also[link]

• Molotov cocktail
• Molotov Line
• Molotov Plan
• Soviet-German relations before 1941

References[link]

Notes

Bibliography

• Brown, Archie (2009). The Rise & Fall of Communism. Bodley Head. ISBN 978-1-845-95076-5. 
• van Goudoever, A.P. (1986). The limits of destalinization in the Soviet Union: political rehabilitations in the Soviet Union since Stalin. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0709926294. 
• Sebag-Montefiore, Simon (2005). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Vintage Books. ISBN 1400076781. 
• Service, Robert (2003). History of Modern Russia: From Tsarism to the Twenty-first Century. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0141037970. 
• Martinovich Zubok, Vladislav; Pleshakov, Konstantin (1996). Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: from Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674455312. 

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Vyacheslav Molotov

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Vyacheslav Molotov

• Annotated bibliography for Vyacheslav Molotov from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• The Meaning of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact Molotov speech to the Supreme Soviet on 31 August 1939
• Reaction to German Invasion of 22 June 1941
• (Finnish) Song about the "Winter War" (Nyet Molotov)