Why Molotov cocktails in Russia-Ukraine war have been given new names
- Also known as petrol bombs, bottle bombs and poor man’s grenades, Molotov cocktails were named after Russia’s foreign minister amid the first Russo-Finnish war
- New wars bring new words, and Ukrainians are shunning the Soviet reference for two new names better suited for their resistance efforts
Not shaken nor stirred, but hurled in warfare or civil unrest, Molotov cocktails – makeshift incendiary devices usually comprising a bottle filled with flammable liquid, with a rag as a fuse – have been the weapon of choice of protesters and revolutionaries worldwide.
Also called petrol or bottle bombs or the poor man’s grenade, these devices were probably first used during the Spanish civil war (1936-39).
The name by which they are best known, though, has its origin in the first Russo-Finnish war (1939-40) – the Winter War – following the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
At the start of the Soviet campaign in Finland, Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov – molotov is Russian for “hammer” – gave assurances in radio broadcasts that it was humanitarian food aid that his country was dropping for the starving Finns, not bombs. Finnish dark humour satirically dubbed the Soviet-made bomb dispenser Molotovin leipäkori, “Molotov’s breadbasket”.
Where Molotov cocktails – petrol bombs – got their name
When the Finnish army subsequently wielded hand-thrown bottle bombs against Soviet tanks, with even the state-owned alcohol company mass-producing them, they framed these as “a drink to go with the food” – Molotovin koktaili, “Molotov’s cocktails”.
War correspondents started reporting this: a January 1940 account in The Times notes a “so-called Molotoff cocktail”. And Hutchinson’s Pictorial History of the War (1940) describes how the “so-called ‘Molotov cocktails’” were considered so effective a weapon against armoured divisions in the Finnish war that they were employed by Britain’s World War II Home Guard. Thus did the device’s name also come to be adopted in English.
History repeats itself. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine sees the Ukrainian army and citizens deploying Molotov cocktails – including by drone.
Yet new wars bring new words. In Lviv – where a brewery has been mass-producing Molotov cocktails – the Soviet reference is shunned for the local “Lviv smoothies”.
Even more pointed is “Bandera smoothies”, now the main nomenclature for bottle bombs, named for the World War II Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera.
Although a highly controversial figure, Bandera represents resistance to Soviet rule, the term “Banderite” used by the Russian government for pro-Western, pro-independence factions. Appropriation of his moniker thus comprises an explicit expression of support for Ukraine sovereignty.
