Word: gromyko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Diplomats who for more than a quarter-century have learned to read the lines on Gromyko's face for clues about Soviet moves abroad have noticed that the fleeting smile that he would offer during the halcyon days of détente has turned to a quasipermanent scowl. His lips seem pursed to utter a defiant nyet at a moment's notice. Says a West German official recently returned from Moscow: "His is the first face you see when you arrive and the last face you see when you leave. These days it is not a pleasant face...
Western diplomats who met privately with Gromyko at the Stockholm Conference on Confidence-and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe last January found him keeping three Reagan speeches close at hand. The text of the President's "focus of evil" address seemed to be particularly dog-eared. Gromyko's repeated references to those speeches underscored the degree to which the U.S. President's slaps at Soviet power and prestige have stirred anger and animosity in Moscow. Few Soviet officials like to be reminded that they once considered Reagan a potential "closet" Nixon who might correct the foreign policy zigzags...
West Europeans, whom Moscow so recently was wooing, have also felt the full force of Soviet fury. While discussing nuclear arms with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti in April, So viet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko made a pointed allusion to the Roman city of Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. After West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's visit a month later, the Soviet press published reports that West Germany's soldiers resemble a "Hitlerite army" and that the government was plotting to take over East Germany. China, which Moscow has every...
Although the twelve-man Politburo makes its decisions collectively, the new ultrahard Line is widely identified with the growing influence of one man: Andrei Gromyko (see box). The combination of Chernenko's rumored weakness as a leader and his lack of experience in foreign affairs appears to have given Gromyko more power than at any other time in his 27 years as Foreign Minister. Foreign delegations that have traveled to Moscow in the past few months have been startled to observe how Gromyko interrupts Chernenko during meetings. In private sessions with Westerners, Soviet diplomats, journalists and academics disparage Chernenko...
...consensus among Western experts today is that although Chernenko quickly collected all the titles that Brezhnev and Andropov held (General Secretary of the Communist Party and President, as well as Chairman of the Defense Council), he in fact merely shares power with Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and Foreign Minister Gromyko. It is the latter who, after more than a quarter-century as the executor of other men's policies, is thought to have been most instrumental in shaping the current hard line. There seems to be no one powerful enough to rein him in. Adam Ulam, director of Harvard...