Q&A
Did Molotov create the Molotov cocktail?
• SHORT ANSWER
First used in Spain, this explosive cocktail was an unwanted tipple for the Soviet foreign minister
• LONG ANSWER
Vyacheslav Molotov was Joseph Stalin’s right-hand man: an old Bolshevik and foreign minister. But while the simple-to-make incendiary device –a glass bottle filled with a flammable liquid with a cloth wick sticking out the neck – bears his name, he was neither its inventor nor ordered its use.
Such petrol bombs appeared during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when Nationalist forces realised that filling small containers with something explosive and hurling them towards the enemy made for an effective method of taking out the Republicans’ tanks. The name came three years later in a different conflict: the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland.
Molotov had been key to a treaty with the Nazis, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that secretly divided Eastern Europe into German and Russian spheres of influence. This gave the Red Army the green light to invade Finland, and made Molotov somewhat disliked.
Then when he claimed that the ensuing Soviet bombings were actually humanitarian aid drops, the Finns had found the focus of their outrage. They referred to the air raids as ‘Molotov’s picnic baskets’. And what goes well with a picnic? A cocktail. Apparently, Molotov utterly hated the association.