of the material is uninteresting, a lot of it is both significant and fascinating. The book is organised notchronologically but according to topics. This helps impart a more vivid, comprehensive impression of Molotov and his times. On international affairs, Molotov is typically epigrammatic. In the sections "With Lenin" and "With Stalin", he is almost expansive.Although you feel that Mr Chuev is far too easy on his subject throughout, here the book really comes to life.The central message in all that Molotov has to say is that Stalin was right. Molotov himself predicts: In time, Stalin will be rehabilitated in history. There will be a Stalin museum in Moscow. Without fail! By popular demand. The role of Stalin was tremendous. I donot doubt that his name will rise again and duly win a glorious place in history. In 1991 Terra, a leading Moscow publisher, printed 300,000 copies of an earlier version of this book. In his introduction, Mr Resis suggests that its publication was "intended to rally neo-Stalinists and other hard-liners in a movement tooust Gorbachev and establish a quasi-Stalinist regime." The results of Russia's elections presumably came as less of a surprise to the publishers than to many western commentators....
