Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov is a truly legendary personality. Over the course of his almost century-long life, he managed to be a member of the Petrograd Revolutionary Committee, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to Mongolia... His name was assigned to cities and villages, factories and collective farms. By whom was this man actually accepted into the party under Lenin, expelled from it by Khrushchev and reinstated by Chernenko? A staunch Bolshevik or the leader of an anti-party group, a wise statesman or a ruthless executioner, a sophisticated diplomat or a political intriguer who freed Hitler's hands by signing the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact? In his new study, the famous historian Boris Sokolov tries to give answers to these and many other questions .