Deadly, not stirred; history and etymology of the Molotov cocktail

Russia’s invasion of a blameless Ukraine has invigorated a citizen response the world hasn’t seen in decades, which in turn has invigorated use of a homemade incendiary device preferred by improvised armies the world over, the Molotov cocktail. But who was Molotov, and why is this guerrilla gasoline grenade deployed in his honor? 

Molotov was an Old Bolshevik who became a great party loyalist to the Soviet Union. A favorite of Stalin and vice versa, Stalin appointed Molotov as his right-hand man, chair of the Council of People’s Commissars, in 1930. He held the post until 1941. 

 

At the outset of World War II, in what is called the First Soviet-Finnish War, the Soviet Union leveraged the chaos of the war as cover to invade Finland, but met unexpected resistance. The surprising weakness of the Soviet machine was noted by an ambitious German leader, who soon afterward launched an ill-fated offensive into Russia. 

 

Here’s where it gets a little convoluted. Soviet propagandists were claiming that visible bomber flights over these little Finnish villages were humanitarian food drops. The local populations began referring to this Soviet fantasy as “Molotov bread baskets.” As tanks and personnel began moving into these villages, they were met with homemade incendiaries they then called “Molotov cocktails,” very real beverages that were intended to complement these non-existent food deliveries from the Politburo. 

 

The idea didn’t originate there, though the name did. A bottle filled with gas and a lit rag is no stroke of genius and has been used as a sabotage for settling scores ever since combustible fuel. Notably though, they were used as a tool of desperation by poorly equipped soldiers in the Spanish Civil War fighting under Franco, and we all know how that ended. The Molotov cocktail. Crude but effective.

 

I guess the most important takeaway is that Molotov cocktails were designed for use on Molotov, not by Molotov.