Word: gromyko
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...Afghan department in the Soviet foreign ministry was one of the quietest spots in the U.S.S.R.'s diplomatic service. But when Afghanistan's nonalignment policy began to slip, the Soviet leadership panicked. Three members of the Kremlin inner circle--Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, KGB chief Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov--feared that the Afghans would tilt toward the U.S. unless stern "measures" were taken. Late on the night of Dec. 12, ailing Communist Party chairman Leonid Brezhnev called the three to a secret meeting to hear their proposal. To keep the U.S. from installing a friendly regime, they...
Still, with Chernenko so feeble and ill, it was I who had to preside over the Politburo sessions throughout most of his tenure. Thus, it fell to me to convene the emergency session at his death. I called Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, one of the longest-serving and most influential members of the Politburo, and arranged to meet him privately half an hour before the session. I told Gromyko: "Too many problems have piled up in the country. I believe you and I have to tackle them together." Gromyko answered: "I fully agree with your appraisal of the situation...
Russian-U.S. agreements, Primakov assured a group of reporters, "do not depend on personalities." It is exactly what one of his famous predecessors, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, used to say. But of course personalities do matter, and Vice President Al Gore had spent four years cultivating friendly working relations with Chernomyrdin in a bilateral Russian-U.S. government commission. Gore believed he was investing in a future in which both of them might be President...
Michael Dobbs saw the death of the Soviet system foretold in the bloated face of President Leonid Brezhnev one day in 1980. Brezhnev was having trouble focusing on what was going on, Dobbs writes, and "clung to Andrei Gromyko, his indispensable Foreign Minister, like a child clings to his nanny." The Kremlin's world, Dobbs thought, was beginning to crumble...
...does not disappoint. His memoir, In Confidence, is a no-pulled-punches page turner of a diplomatic history, spiced with anecdotes and insights. He recounts how Stalin once told his Ambassador to the U.S., Andrei Gromyko, to learn English by listening to sermons in American churches. How Dobrynin, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, communicated with Moscow via Western Union, which sent a bicycle messenger to pick up coded cables. How Moscow secretly offered financial aid to Vice President Hubert Humphrey for his 1968 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon (Humphrey declined the offer). How Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev...