For nearly half a century Andrei Gromyko, 78, has been the consummate Soviet diplomat — dour, emotionless and undeviating from the Communist Party foreign policy line. “Grim Grom,” he was called in the West, for his ever gloomy expression, which seldom betrayed what was on his mind. Now Gromyko, who was Foreign Minister for 28 years until taking the mostly ceremonial post of President in 1985, is allowing a rare insight into his thoughts. In Pamyatnoye (Remembrance), a two-volume, 850-page autobiography that is on sale in Moscow, Gromyko describes, among other things, the late Mao Zedong’s proposal to use nuclear weapons against U.S. troops — and his own brief infatuation with Marilyn Monroe.
According to Gromyko, Mao suggested in 1958 that the U.S. could be induced to invade the mainland, possibly after an American nuclear attack, whereupon Chinese forces would retreat into the hinterlands and lure U.S. troops into a lethal trap. Mao suggested, Gromyko says, that the Soviet Union then join the assault on U.S. troops “with all its forces,” an apparent reference to nuclear arms, which China did not possess until 1964. Gromyko writes of being “extremely surprised . . . because of the lightness with which he proclaimed a schedule of American aggression against China with the use of nuclear weapons, and how this aggression could be opposed.” Their talk ended when Gromyko rejected Mao’s scheme. (A Chinese official last week denied Gromyko’s account of the meeting.)
Gromyko’s mostly leaden prose flutters when he describes a 1959 encounter with Marilyn Monroe at a Hollywood reception. “She was considered the embodiment of womanhood in the ’60s,” writes Gromyko. The star-struck diplomat sounds almost breathless when he recounts that Monroe “sat at a table across from us, literally five meters away.” He adds, “As I was leaving, she suddenly called out, ‘Mr. Gromyko, how are you?’ She said it as if we were old friends.” Gromyko dwells at length on Monroe’s 1962 suicide, speculating that she was murdered by U.S. Government agents because of her supposed Communist sympathies.
Having dealt with nine U.S. Presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, Gromyko declares that “perhaps the most complex” discussion of his career was with John Kennedy at the White House during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. “Not once in the whole course of the conversation did Kennedy raise the question of the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba,” Gromyko asserts. “Consequently, I did not have to answer whether or not there were such weapons in Cuba.” Gromyko’s favorite President is Roosevelt, but he also expresses admiration for Richard Nixon’s studied pragmatism. Gromyko has little to say about Reagan beyond a reference to his “courtesy” at a 1984 meeting, but finds Nancy “energetic” and “confident.”
Gromyko provides scant detail about the six major Soviet leaders under whom he served. He calls Joseph Stalin a “cruel man” who “created a monstrous ) tyranny,” a view consistent with the latest winds of glasnost, but he refuses to condemn Stalin’s terror outright. One of the most revealing anecdotes in the book is Gromyko’s account of a telephone call he received from Konstantin Chernenko one day in 1985 in which the ailing Soviet leader asked whether he should resign because of ill health. “There’s no need to hurry,” Gromyko cautioned. Three days later Chernenko was dead.
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