Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (Russian: Андрей Андреевич Громыко; Belarusian: Андрэй Андрэевіч Грамыка; 18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1909 – 2 July 1989)[2] was a Soviet politician and diplomat during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1957–1985) and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1988). Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr Nyet ("Mr No") or "Grim Grom", because of his frequent use of the Soviet veto in the United Nations Security Council.[3]
"Gromyko" redirects here. For other people named Gromyko, see Gromyko (surname).
Andrei Gromyko
Konstantin Chernenko
Vasily Kuznetsov (acting)
Post created
18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1909
Staryye Gromyki, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Gomel, Belarus)
2 July 1989 (aged 79)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1931–1989)
2, including Anatoly
Gromyko's political career started in 1939 in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1946). He became the Soviet ambassador to the United States in 1943, leaving that position in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. Upon his return to Moscow he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.
As Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Gromyko was directly involved in deliberations with the Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis and helped broker a peace treaty ending the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. Under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, he played a central role in the establishment of détente with the United States by negotiating the ABM Treaty, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the SALT I & II among others. When Brezhnev suffered a stroke in 1975 impairing his ability to govern, Gromyko effectively dictated policymaking alongside KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, Defense Minister Andrei Grechko and Grechko's successor, Marshal Dmitry Ustinov. Even after Brezhnev's death, Gromyko's rigid conservatism and distrust of the West continued to dominate the Soviet Union's foreign policy until Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985.
Following Gorbachev's election as General Secretary, Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister and was appointed to the largely ceremonial post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Subsequently, he retired from political life in 1988, and died the following year in Moscow.
Early life[edit]
Background and youth[edit]
Gromyko was born to a poor "semi-peasant, semi-worker" Belarusian family[4] in the Belarusian village of Staryye Gromyki, near Gomel, on 18 July 1909. Gromyko's father, Andrei Matveyevich, worked as a seasonal worker in a local factory. Andrei Matveyevich was not a very educated man, having only attended four years of school, but knew how to read and write. He had fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.[5] Gromyko's mother, Olga Yevgenyevna, came from a poor peasant family in the neighbouring city of Zhelezniki. She attended school only for a short period of time as, when her father died, she left to help her mother with the harvest.[6]
Gromyko grew up near the district town of Vetka where most of the inhabitants were devoted Old Believers in the Russian Orthodox Church.[7] Gromyko's own village was also predominantly religious, but Gromyko started doubting the supernatural at a very early age. His first dialog on the subject was with his grandmother Marfa, who answered his inquiry about God with "Wait until you get older. Then you will understand all this much better". According to Gromyko, "Other adults said basically the same thing" when talking about religion. Gromyko's neighbour at the time, Mikhail Sjeljutov, was a freethinker and introduced Gromyko to new non-religious ideas[8] and told Gromyko that scientists were beginning to doubt the existence of God. From the age of nine, after the Bolshevik revolution, Gromyko started reading atheist propaganda in flyers and pamphlets.[9] At the age of thirteen Gromyko became a member of the Komsomol and held anti-religious speeches in the village with his friends as well as promoting Communist values.[10]
The news that Germany had attacked the Russian Empire in August 1914 came without warning to the local population. This was the first time, as Gromyko notes, that he felt "love for his country". His father, Andrei Matveyevich, was again conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army and served for three years on the southwestern front, under the leadership of General Aleksei Brusilov. Andrei Matveyevich returned home on the eve of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia.[11]
Gromyko was elected First Secretary of the local Komsomol chapter at the beginning of 1923.[12] Following Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, the villagers asked Gromyko what would happen in the leader's absence. Gromyko remembered a communist slogan from the heyday of the October Revolution: "The revolution was carried through by Lenin and his helpers." He then told the villagers that Lenin was dead but "his aides, the Party, still lived on."[13]
Education and party membership[edit]
When he was young, Gromyko's mother Olga told him that he should leave his home town to become an educated man.[14] Gromyko followed his mother's advice and, after finishing seven years of primary school and vocational education in Gomel, he moved to Borisov to attend technical school. Gromyko became a member of the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks in 1931, something he had dreamed of since he learned about the "difference between a poor farmer and a landowner, a worker and a capitalist". Gromyko was voted in as secretary of his party cell at his first party conference and used most of his weekends doing volunteer work.[13] Gromyko received a very small stipend to live on, but still had a strong nostalgia for the days when he worked as a volunteer. It was about this time that Gromyko met his future wife, Lydia Grinevich. Grinevich was the daughter of a Belarusian peasant family and came from Kamenki, a small village to the west of Minsk.[15] She and Gromyko had two children, Anatoly and Emiliya.[16]
After studying in Borisov for two years Gromyko was appointed principal of a secondary school in Dzyarzhynsk, where he taught, supervised the school, and continued his studies. One day, a representative from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia offered him an opportunity to do post-graduate work in Minsk.[17] Gromyko traveled to Minsk for an interview with the head of the university, I.M. Borisevich, who explained that a new post-graduate program had been formed for training in economics; Gromyko's record in education and social work made him a desirable candidate. Gromyko advised Borisevich that he would have difficulty living on a meager student stipend. Borisevich assured him that on finishing the program, his salary would be at the party's top pay grade – "a decent living wage". Gromyko accepted the offer, moving his family to Minsk in 1933. Gromyko and the other post-graduates were invited to an anniversary reception [18] at which, as recounted in Gromyko's Memoirs:
At the helm of Soviet foreign policy[edit]
United Nations[edit]
Gromyko was appointed Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations (UN) in April 1946.[36] The USSR supported the election of the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, Trygve Lie, a former Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, in the opinion of Gromyko, Lie became an active supporter of the "expansionist behaviour" of the United States and its "American aggressionist" policy. Because of this political stance, Gromyko believed Lie to be a poor Secretary-General.[37] Trygve's successor, Swede Dag Hammarskjöld also promoted what Gromyko claimed as "anti-Soviet policies".[38] U Thant, the third Secretary-General, once told Gromyko that it was "close to impossible" to have an "objective opinion of the USSR" in the Secretariat of the United Nations because the majority of Secretariat members were of American nationality, or "supporters of the United States".[39]
Gromyko often used the Soviet veto power in the early days of the United Nations. So familiar was a Soviet veto in the early days of the UN that Gromyko became known as Mr Nyet, literally meaning "Mr No". During the first 10 years of the UN, the Soviet Union used its veto 79 times. In the same period, the Republic of China used the veto once, France twice and the others not at all.[40] On 14 May 1947, Gromyko advocated the one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the two-state solution as the second best option in the case that "relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine ... proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them".[41]
Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom[edit]
Gromyko was appointed Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom at a June 1952 meeting with Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin. Stalin paced back and forth as normal, telling Gromyko about the importance of his new office, and saying "The United Kingdom now has the opportunity to play a greater role in international politics. But it is not clear in which direction the British government with their great diplomatic experience will steer their efforts [...] This is why we need people who understand their way of thinking". Gromyko met with Winston Churchill in 1952 not to talk about current politics but nostalgically about World War II. Gromyko met Churchill again in 1953 to talk about their experiences during World War II before returning to Russia when he was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.[42]
Personal life[edit]
Gromyko met his wife, Lydia (1911–2004) in Minsk where they were both studying agriculture at the Minsk Institute of Agricultural Science.[1][69][70] They married in 1931.[71] They had two children: a son, Anatoly, and a daughter, Emilia.[72][69] Anatoly (1932–2017) served as a diplomat and was an academic.[73]
Other countries
