Anatoli Dobrynin

By Henry Kissinger

Soviet ambassadors are the product of a bureaucracy that rewards discipline and discourages initiative; of a society historically distrustful of foreigners; of a people hiding its latent insecurity by heavyhanded self-assertiveness. With some Soviet diplomats one has the uneasy feeling that they report in a way to suit the preconceptions of their superiors.

Most Soviet diplomats certainly cling rigidly to formal positions, for they can never be accused of unnecessary compromise if they show no initiative.

Dobrynin avoided these professional deformations. He was a classic product of the Communist society. The first member of his family to go to a university, he was trained as an engineer. Whether he owed his flexibility to his training in a subject relatively free of deadening ideology, or to a natural disposition, he was one of the few Soviet diplomats of my acquaintance who could understand the psychology of others.

He was suave not just by Soviet standards--which leave ample room for clumsiness--but by any criteria. He knew how to talk to Americans in a way brilliantly attuned to their preconceptions. He was especially skilled at evoking the inexhaustible American sense of guilt, by persistently but pleasantly hammering home the impression that every deadlock was our fault.

I never forgot that Dobrynin was a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party; I never indulged in the conceit that his easy manner reflected any predisposition toward me or toward the West. I had no doubt that if the interests of his country required it he could be as ruthless or duplicitous as any other Communist leader. But I considered his unquestioning support of the Soviet line an asset, not a liability: it enabled us to measure the policies of his masters with precision. Occasionally he would give me his personal analysis of American politics; without exception it was acute and even wise.

This gave us some confidence that the Kremlin would have at its disposal a sophisticated assessment of conditions here. An accurate understanding could not guarantee that Moscow would choose our preferred response, but it reduced the prospects of gross miscalculation.

Dobrynin was free of the tendency toward petty chiseling by which the run-of-the-mill Soviet diplomat demonstrates his vigilance to his superiors: he understood that a reputation for reliability is an important asset in foreign policy.

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