Word: brezhnevs
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...that the subject was Viet Nam, the atmosphere clouded suddenly. Each of the three Soviet leaders in turn unleashed a diatribe against Nixon, who, except for two one-sentence interruptions, endured it in dignified silence. Not only was the substance tough but the tone was crudely hectoring. Brezhnev complained not only about our "cruel" bombing but about the whole history of our involvement in Viet Nam. He denied that military actions were needed to end the war. Hanoi was eager to negotiate; all we had to do was to get rid of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu and accept...
...Where Brezhnev had been emotional, Kosygin was analytical; where Brezhnev had pounded the table, he was glacially correct, though in substance the most aggressive of the troika. He recalled his conversations with Lyndon Johnson, who had first predicted victory and failed. He implied the same fate for Nixon. He hinted that Hanoi might reconsider its previous refusal to permit forces of other countries to fight on its side-prompting Nixon to retort that we were not frightened by that threat...
...tung and Chou En-lai represented a nation that had always been culturally pre-eminent in its region. Its leaders were aloof, self-assured, composed. Brezhnev represented a nation that had survived not by civilizing its conquerors but by outlasting them, a people suspended between Europe and Asia, with a culture that had destroyed its traditions without yet entirely replacing them. He sought to obscure his lack of assurance by boisterousness, and his sense of latent inadequacy by occasional bullying. To be sure, no one reached the top of a Communist hierarchy except by ruthlessness. Yet the charm...
...Brezhnev was quintessentially Russian. He was a mixture of crudeness and warmth; at the same time brutal and engaging, cunning and disarming. While he boasted of Soviet strength, one had the sense that he was not really all that sure of it. Having grown up in a backward society nearly overrun by Nazi invasion, he seemed to feel in his bones the vulnerability of his system. It is my nightmare that his successors, bred in more tranquil times and accustomed to modern technology and military strength, might be freer of self-doubt; with no such inferiority complex, they may believe...
...believe that part of Brezhnev sincerely sought, if not peace in the Western sense, then surcease from the danger and risks and struggles of a lifetime. When I met him he had gone through the Stalin purges of the '30s (indeed, his first big jump up the ladder took place then), the Second World War, a new wave of purges, the power struggle following the death of Stalin and the intrigue that led to the overthrow of Khrushchev and catapulted Brezhnev to the top. He seemed at once exuberant and spent, eager to prevail but at minimum risk...