From "Molotov Remembers"

At the Xth Party Congress in the spring of 1921, I was elected a member of the Central Committee of the party and then, at the Central Committee plenum, as an alternate member of the Politburo. At the time the Politburo of the Central Committee consisted of five members — Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev — and three alternates — myself, Kalinin, and Bukharin. . . .
( page 98 )

Comment   Those data look credible for the most part. But, knowing those people, the following occurs to me :

I cannot recall ever having seen a mention of Mr. Molotov himself in any publications of the period (early 1920�s) — by any Russian, Polish, German, French, English, American, authors.

Was he really an �alternate member� of the Politburo then ? Possibly ; but if so, he would have probably kept a very �low key� appearance then. (A rather reasonable thing for a Bolshevik.)

So, I do not know but I would not take Mr. Molotov�s word for this matter without some corroboration by other sources.

Based on the data from Mr. Molotov, the Central Committee in 1921 consisted of :

* Lenin, a Tartar. His real name was Oulianoff ; although of the Tartar ancestry, he was a fully naturalized Russian (his precedents were reportedly in possession of a Russian title of nobility). His wife Krupskaya was Jewish.

* Stalin, a Georgian, his real name was Dzugashvilli,

* Trotsky, a Jew, his real name was Bronstein,

* Kamenev, a Jew his real name was Rosenfeld,

* Zinoviev, a Jew, his real name was Apfelbaum.

The alternate members of the Poliburo were ;

* Kalinin, a Russian. (He had never had any problems with Stalin etc. ; nor did he have any real influence on anything. Of peasant ancestry, his main job as a make-believe �president� of the USSR was to pose for the pictures).

* Bukharin, a Russian, and

* Molotov (if one is to believe Mr. Molotov this time), a Russian. His real name was Scriabin.

WPT

Chuev, Feliks Ivanovich, 1941- Title(s) Sto sorok besed s Molotovym. English Molotov remembers : inside Kremlin politics : conversations with Felix Chuev / edited with an introduction and notes by Albert Resis. Publisher Chicago : I.R. Dee, 1993. Paging xxiii, 438 p. ; 24 cm. Notes Includes index.

From cover notes : �Molotov�s conversations and monologues provide assurance that the banality of evil has never been limited to the borders of Germany� (David Remnick, author of Lenin�s Tomb) ; �One does not so much read this book as engage in a one-on-one conversation with a major figure in a gigantic criminal organization.� (Woodford McClellan, author of Russia : a history of the Soviet period ).