Editing Vyacheslav Molotov (section)

=== Role in the Great Purge ===
[[File:Molotov, Stalin and Voroshilov, 1937.jpg|thumb|Molotov (left) with [[Stalin]] (center) and [[Kliment Voroshilov|Voroshilov]] (right) in 1937 during the great purge]] 
After his return to favor, in August, Molotov supported Stalin throughout the purge, during which, in 1938 alone, 20 out of 28 [[People's Commissars]] in Molotov's Government were executed. {{sfn|Montefiore|2005|p=244}} After his deputy, Rudzutak, had been arrested, Molotov visited him in prison, and recalled years later that... "Rudzutak said he had been badly beaten and tortured. Nevertheless he held firm. Indeed, he seemed to have been cruelly tortured" ...but he did not intervene.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chuev |first1=Felix |title=Molotov Remembers, Inside Kremlin Politics |date=1993 |publisher=Ivan R. Dee |location=Chicago |isbn=1-56663-027-4 |pages=272–74}}</ref>  
During the Great Purge, he approved 372 documented execution lists, more than any other Soviet official, including Stalin. Molotov was one of the few with whom Stalin openly discussed the purges. When Stalin received a note denouncing the deputy chairman of [[Gosplan]], [[Georgy Oppokov|G.I.Lomov]], he passed it to Molotov, who wrote on it: "For immediate arrest of that bastard Lomov."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy |title=Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism |date=1976 |publisher=Spokesman |location=Nottingham |pages=345–46}}</ref>

Before the Bolshevik revolution, Molotov had been a "very close friend" of a [[Socialist Revolutionary Party|Socialist Revolutionary]], [[Aleksandr Arosev|Alexander Arosev]], who shared his exile in Vologda. In 1937, fearing arrest, Arosev tried three times to ring Molotov, who refused to speak to him. He was arrested and shot. In the 1950s, Molotov gave Arosev's daughter his signed copies of her father's books, but later wished he had kept them. "It appears that it was not so much the loss of his 'very close friend' but the loss of part of his own book collection ... that Molotov continued to regret."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Polonsky |title=Molotov's Magic Lantern |page=87}}</ref>

Late in life, Molotov described his role in purges of the 1930s, arguing that despite the overbreadth of the purges, they were necessary to avoid Soviet defeat in World War II:

{{quote|Socialism demands immense effort. And that includes sacrifices. Mistakes were made in the process. But we could have suffered greater losses in the war – perhaps even defeat – if the leadership had flinched and had allowed internal disagreements, like cracks in a rock. Had leadership broken down in the 1930s we would have been in a most critical situation, many times more critical than actually turned out. I bear responsibility for this policy of repression and consider it correct. Admittedly, I have always said grave mistakes and excesses were committed, but the policy on the whole was correct.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chuev |first=Felix |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28148163 |title=Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics : Conversations with Felix Chuev |publisher=I.R. Dee |others=Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov, Albert Resis |year=1993 |isbn=1-56663-027-4 |location=Chicago |pages=256 |oclc=28148163}}</ref>}}