Word: dobrynins
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Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin is a cordial man, admired by Washington hostesses for his charming mimicry of bourgeois social graces. So special was his position that he had been accustomed to entering the State Department by driving into the basement garage and then riding a private elevator to the seventh floor, where the Secretary's office is located...
...this changed at 5 p.m. on Jan. 29,1981, when Dobrynin called on me for the first time in my new capacity. In a maneuver that was savored for its subtle nuances and vivid symbolism, Dobrynin's car was made to back out of the garage and proceed to the main entrance, where the flustered Ambassador dismounted into a thicket of microphones and cameras...
...this inspired gesture, which conveyed so aptly the change in American attitudes toward Moscow. The situation arose, however, not from geopolitical considerations but from bureaucratic pique. American ambassadors in Moscow had been kept in sterile isolation, and the Soviet desk of the department initiated the decision to take away Dobrynin's parking privileges as a means of getting the Soviets' attention. When Dobrynin entered my office, he managed to conceal any chagrin he may have felt as a result of being treated as an ordinary mortal...
There was another envoy who needed to hear the message. This was the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoli Dobrynin. "It's good to see you back in Washington, Al," he said when he made his first call on me at the State Department. "You belong here." Coming quickly to the point, I raised with him the question of the transshipment of Soviet arms through Nicaragua to the insurgents in El Salvador. "All lies," said Dobrynin...
...Dobrynin said this was certainly no way to start an Administration. How, he asked, should the U.S. and the Soviet Union begin to develop a dialogue? I said, "It is not acceptable to talk peace while acting differently. One statement we can never accept is [President Leonid] Brezhnev's insistence on your right to support so-called wars of liberation whenever and wherever targets of opportunity develop...