Word: dobrynins
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...continue to chew on Lenin's dogma that bourgeois governments are just the "servants" of monopoly capital. Is that not the secret control center? The great gap in Soviet understanding of U.S. policies and practices sometimes means that even experienced message carriers and advisers of the Politburo like Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Ambassador in Washington, do not necessarily convey accurate information. Americans would be astonished if they knew how little Gromyko, who has lived in America and visits regularly, knows about day-to-day life in their country. One of Dobrynin's important functions has been to correct the limited...
...mission, in fact, had served the Foreign Minister the cheapest available honey, as I explained to him. He immediately wanted to know the price, which he thought was high, and then the cost of other goods--better honey, shirts, Manhattan apartments. As Dobrynin and I answered his questions, Gromyko expressed surprise at the expense of each item. He had never visited American stores and knew barely anything of the costs or real standard of living...
...Dobrynin tried to enlighten him in a broader way. To please Gromyko, he agreed that prices were high (though he knew they were not, compared with the portion of their salaries Soviets must spend for food and consumer goods). But he also added that the variety of items available in American markets was extensive. Gromyko wrinkled his nose in a characteristic gesture of distaste for an inconvenient truth. "Maybe you're right," he admitted, "but they have so many problems too. Poverty. Massive unemployment. Race hatred...
...course there are those things. No one denies that." Dobrynin sugared the pill he wanted Gromyko to swallow. "But it seems to me that Soviet correspondents tend to overemphasize that side of things. They create a mistaken impression of the situation here. You know, when I go home to Moscow, people ask me about America as though they thought it was about to fall apart." He laughed loudly. "Our people should think more realistically. They ought to have more accurate information, not just the exaggerations of hack writers...
Arrangements for the congressional luncheon following the Inaugural Address featured two innovations. One was the inclusion of the dean of the diplomatic corps, the Soviet Union's longtime Ambassador to Washington, Anatoli Dobrynin. The other was an invitation to six "real people," as Mathias called them, from around the nation. Selected through professional associations, the group includes a truck driver from Alabama, a union official from Maryland, a farmer from Kansas, a fire fighter from Texas and a businesswoman from California. For the sixth, Buffalo Narcotics Agent Joe Petronella, the invitation presented a problem: he specializes in undercover work requiring...