Word: tsarapkin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...West Germany. He was Walter Scheel, the leader of the third-place Free Democratic Party. As West Germany's new President, Gustav Heinemann, a Social Democrat, celebrated his 70th birthday, there were among the presents he received 50 red roses. The sender: the Soviet ambassador to Bonn, Semyon Tsarapkin...
...extraordinary scene. There, in Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger's antique-filled office in Bonn, sat Soviet Ambassador Semyon ("Scratchy") Tsarapkin. Painstakingly, the Russian explained Moscow's grave concern over the first China border clash early this month to the head of a government long reviled by the Soviets as the chief villain and menace in Europe. Patiently, the German listened as Tsarapkin charged that the "chauvinist foreign policy of Peking" threatened the cause of peace and stability in the world...
...probably the first time that any Soviet envoy had so formally attacked the policies of the other Communist giant. Behind Tsarapkin's words was a warning: any further tightening of the profitable West German-Chinese trade links would be most unwelcome to the Russians. In Paris, Rome and Tokyo, Tsarapkin's colleagues were giving the French, Italian and Japanese Foreign Ministers roughly the same message. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau also got the word. The intent was clear: China, no longer a brotherly socialist nation but instead a dangerous foe, should be expelled from the ranks...
...days last week, it seemed as if the episode could be avoided entirely. Bearing an important message, Ambassador Tsarapkin helicoptered 170 miles from Bonn to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger's weekend home in Stuttgart. Over glasses of light Swabian wine, the two men chatted amiably as the Soviet diplomat explained a way out for both sides. If the West Germans would withdraw the Federal Assembly from West Berlin, the East Germans would allow West Berliners to pass through the Wall during the Easter holidays to visit relatives in East Berlin, the first such passage permitted in three years...
...Senate tried once more to reopen negotiations with East Germany, but a telex reply from East Berlin only reiterated the earlier Communist intransigence. Western diplomats were puzzled by the sudden reversal in Communist tactics. After all, even East German Boss Walter Ulbricht had sent a compromise proposal similar to Tsarapkin's to West Germany. Ultimately the most widely accepted supposition in the west was that Ulbricht had only reluctantly gone along with the initiative in the first place. By that theory, he later succeeded in persuading the hard-liners in the Kremlin leadership to override the compromise offer...