Monday, Feb. 11, 1985

Breaking with Moscow

The moment the two Soviet officials arrived at their offices at the United Nations Secretariat building in New York City, they knew something was very, very wrong. The inner office was closed off. The lock on the door had been changed, and a printed notice said that the office had been sealed by U.N. security forces. The date was Friday, April 6, 1978.

The distraught Soviets summoned building guards and demanded an explanation. What had happened to their countryman and boss, Arkady Shevchenko? He was a ranking Soviet diplomat, a former top adviser to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and, for the past five years Under Secretary-General of the U.N., one of Kurt Waldheim's senior deputies. The two Soviets were told that the office had in fact been sealed at Shevchenko's own request the night before. More alarmed than ever, Shevchenko's assistants hurried to their real headquarters, the Soviet mission on East 67th Street in Manhattan.

Five days later the world learned what the Soviets had immediately suspected. SOVIET CITIZEN, WALDHEIM AIDE, DEFECTS AT U.N., read the headline over the front-page story in the New York Times. Shevchenko was his country's highest-ranking diplomatic defector since World War II. At 47 he was already a 22-year veteran of the Soviet foreign service, and he had risen quickly in its ranks. Far more important than his highly visible assignment in New York was the one that occupied him from late 1970 until early 1973 when, as an adviser to Gromyko, he was able to observe at first hand the inner workings of the Politburo, the U.S.S.R.'s ruling body.

Says a former American intelligence officer: "Shevchenko was a very big catch indeed. He had been in a lot of key places deep inside the Soviet apparatus at key times--places where we rarely get any kind of glimpse at all. He had a lot to tell us." Now, seven years later, he is telling the world. His memoir, Breaking with Moscow, is to be published this month (Knopf; 378 pages; $18.95). A resident of Washington, Shevchenko lives comfortably off lecture fees ($6,000 to $12,000 a speech). His American wife Elaine, whom he married in late 1978, helped him write his book.

The most sensational revelation in Shevchenko's memoir is that he had been working as an agent-in-place for the CIA for 2 1/2 years before his defection. But the book is far more than a true-life spy story. It is rich in insights into the life of the Soviet elite, the personal rivalries and bureaucratic infighting, the sycophancy and nepotism, and the workings of Kremlin policymaking. Examples:

-- En route to the U.S. in 1960 as part of the entourage accompanying Nikita Khrushchev, Shevchenko hears the bumptious Premier mutter threats against the life of then U.N. Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, who died mysteriously in a plane crash in the Congo a year later.

-- Chatting with a colleague, he learns of a heated Politburo debate over launching a nuclear strike against China.

-- He describes Moscow's campaign to conclude a treaty liquidating all chemical and biological weapons as a propaganda sham and notes, "There is no question that the U.S.S.R. is much better prepared than the U.S. for this type of warfare."

-- Friends with KGB and Central Committee sources tell him of a growing move to get rid of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, "one way or another."

On the following pages, TIME presents the first of two excerpts from Breaking with Moscow, carrying Shevchenko from his early days as a diplomat through his participation on the edges of the summit meeting between Brezhnev and Richard Nixon in 1972.

Despite Shevchenko's distaste for the system he left behind, he maintains a high degree of respect for his erstwhile mentor, Gromyko, the book's dominant figure.

During the deep chill between Moscow and Washington over the past several years, many American specialists on Soviet affairs speculated that Gromyko had become the No. 1 hard-liner in the Kremlin and, as such, the principal obstacle to an improvement in relations. Nonsense, says Shevchenko. He is convinced that Gromyko is committed to the restoration of detente--a policy that Shevchenko, too, favors. Thus, paradoxically, Shevchenko's book is not just a denunciation of the Soviet leadership. It is also a grudging defense of one of that leadership's most powerful and conspicuous members.

"YOU KNOW, THE POLES HATE US"

From 1949 until 1954, I was a student in the dingy gray four-story building, half hidden by the ramparts of Krymsky Bridge, that housed the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Many of its graduates are now approaching top official status. This is particularly true of the Foreign Ministry, where two current deputy ministers, numerous ambassadors and chiefs of many key departments are alumni.

After graduation, I went on to do graduate work in disarmament. My study of this issue led to my first meeting with Andrei Gromyko, then First Deputy Foreign Minister. Gromyko's son and my fellow student, Anatoly, proposed in 1955 that we write a joint article on the role of parliaments in the struggle for peace and disarmament. Anatoly suggested we show the article to his father. He received us cordially at his apartment, a spacious set of rooms in one of the central Moscow buildings reserved for high government and party officials. His intent brown eyes, his whole appearance, reflected authority and self-confidence. After reading our manuscript attentively, Gromyko gave it his approval, making a few brief comments, sensible and to the point.

In the conversation that followed, Gromyko impressed me with the warmth of his remarks about the wartime Soviet-American alliance against Hitler's Germany. His favorite foreign films are those made in the U.S. during the war and postwar years when he lived in Washington and New York as a young diplomat. He remembers the actors' names and gives running commentaries on their performances and backgrounds. It is almost as though the Soviet- American alliance was the high point of his life, the idyl he seeks to recapture through his dealings with Americans. When Gromyko critiqued our article, the iciest days of the cold war were behind us, but his observations on the necessity and the possibility of restoring good if not truly friendly relations with the U.S. went well beyond the official Soviet stand.

I was nearly finished with my dissertation when I was summoned to see Semyon Tsarapkin, head of the Foreign Ministry department in charge of United Nations and disarmament affairs. I found him posing like a czar behind his desk, strutting amid the disorder of an office piled with heaps of papers and books, ornamented by a battery of telephones, and infused with an oppressive sense of his abrasive personality.

"We're starting a new policy that will mean serious negotiating on disarmament," he began. "It's one thing to study such matters, but it's something else to be involved in the real work. Why don't you come on for a time and find out for yourself how you like it?" I joined the ministry in October 1956.

Almost immediately, nearly everyone's attention was focused on Poland and Hungary. In October, Wladyslaw Gomulka had been elected First Secretary of the Polish party's Central Committee in defiance of the Soviets. Khrushchev and other leaders felt constrained to accept Gomulka because they were loath to suppress the Poles by force. "You know," a friend in the Foreign Ministry told me, "the Poles hate us; they would fight at the drop of a hat." I knew it was true. Still, there was no danger that Poland could break away from us.

More shocking to me were events in Hungary. In the explosion following the "Polish October," I thought that Imre Nagy had gone too far in declaring Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and his attempt at disrupting that nation's socialist system. Still, I was shaken by the brutality of the reprisals. It was in this context that I first heard of Yuri Andropov, our Ambassador to Hungary. A classmate at our embassy in Budapest described how Andropov handled the erupting crisis: "He was so calm, even while the bullets were flying--when everyone else at the embassy felt as if we were in a besieged fortress."

My friend also told me that before and during the critical days of the uprising Moscow's instructions were sometimes confusing and occasionally betrayed a lack of understanding of what was really going on. Andropov's advice to Moscow, however, was extensive and served as a basis for swift decisions, including the decision to crush the rebellion with tanks.

FOILING A

PALACE COUP

As I began work in the United Nations and disarmament section, I discovered how lucky I was. The "Germanists," the "disarmament boys," the "Americanists," the "Europeans" (chiefly concerned with Soviet-French relations) and a small group of others belonged to a privileged caste. We were envied by the "provincials," who frequently spent their entire careers in Africa and Asia. Not only was this an unattractive fate because of the unpleasant climates, low salaries and lack of consumer goods, but diplomats assigned to these areas seldom advanced to senior positions.

The privileged ones, on the other hand, were almost constantly in close proximity to the leadership. Gromyko knew many of them personally, remembered their names, and fostered the careers of the most able. This group formed the backbone of the younger generation in the ministry.

In 1957, my job, as a third secretary, was to monitor the disarmament negotiations then taking place in London under the auspices of the U.N. I was convinced that the Soviet Union was more interested in disarmament than the U.S. was. So was the First Secretary of the party, Nikita Khrushchev. The head of our department, Tsarapkin, told me that Khrushchev was very bitter that at the London negotiations, there had been sudden changes in the American position, and the U.S. had withdrawn what our side considered a significant concession.

At that time, Khrushchev was facing opposition at home. The Stalinists who survived the purges of the '30s were the sternest guardians of Communist doctrine, and they often grumbled about Khrushchev. One of them was Tsarapkin's deputy and my superior, Kirill Novikov. Along with Tsarapkin, Novikov had sat behind Stalin during the Potsdam Conference in 1945. He would reveal himself in the way he reminisced: "In Stalin's time we had real order. There were none of these rhetorical flourishes and vacillations." Moscow was rife with gossip about intrigues. A clique in the Presidium (Khrushchev's name for the Politburo), labeled the "anti-party group" and including Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov, nearly engineered a palace coup against Khrushchev. But he convened the Central Committee, stronghold of his support, and stripped his rivals of their positions. Around this time Andrei Gromyko became Foreign Minister.

Not long afterward, I joined the party for very practical reasons: without the right political credentials I would not get party and KGB approval for promotions or assignments abroad. I cannot count the hours I spent in party organization meetings in the ministry, listening to or delivering dull reports on doctrinal matters or on the foibles and failings of other "comrades." As a rule, the pettier the subject, the longer the discussion of it.

The most unpleasant aspect of party responsibility, and the party chore I found most demeaning, was the task of snooping into and supervising the personal lives of others. Communists are expected to set shining examples of behavior. When, instead, they engage in amoralka (misconduct)--the most common forms being heavy drinking, philandering and, among diplomats, smuggling Western consumer goods--their peers are supposed to recall them to righteousness. The party had a series of weapons for these situations, ranging from a slap on the wrist, vygovor (a reprimand), to expulsion. But the party prefers to redeem rather than punish. The higher a transgressor's rank, moreover, the greater the tendency to cover up his misdeeds.

In early February 1958, Novikov took me to a meeting with Gromyko. It was the first time I had seen him since joining the ministry. Gromyko opened the discussion with a propaganda tirade. He said that Khrushchev considered it necessary to develop a campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing: "He has decided that we must set an example and unilaterally discontinue the testing of nuclear weapons."

I asked Gromyko how we could explain our position when we had recently declared that the Soviet Union could not take such a step, as it would place us at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the U.S. Rather testily, he replied that he was encouraged to see that I had paid attention to our former position. Frowning, he added, "No explanation of the change is necessary. The crux of the matter is that our decision will have tremendous political effect. That's our main objective."

In 1959, Khrushchev visited the U.S. and appeared before the U.N. General Assembly with a proposal for general and complete disarmament. He achieved his predicted propaganda success. Western leaders recognized it as a ploy, but no one spoke out openly against it.

Khrushchev's next venture was to bring him trouble on the domestic front. Claiming that "the clouds of war have begun to disperse," as a result of his "historic" visit to the U.S., he initiated a cutback of 1.2 million personnel in the armed forces, and he justified the decision by saying that modern defense capabilities were determined by nuclear firepower and the quality of delivery systems: "Military aviation and the navy have lost their former significance." The military leaders and the armaments industries could not let this pass unchallenged.

The decline in morale in the armed forces reached alarming proportions. In 1960, a navy captain described to us how officers had wept as they watched nearly completed cruisers and destroyers at the docks in Leningrad being cut up for scrap on Khrushchev's orders.

More significant than the navy's chagrin, however, was the alarm felt by the Central Committee ideologists. By reducing the conventional forces, especially the navy, Khrushchev was undercutting the most efficient means of aiding pro- Moscow liberation movements and the Soviet Union's allies in the Third World. In the long run, these moves cost him dearly.

SETTING A TRAP

FOR EISENHOWER

In concentrating on his Western initiatives, Khrushchev made yet another mistake: turning his back on China. Friends in the Central Committee told me that when he met with Mao Tse-tung in Peking in 1959, the Chinese accused him of sacrificing revolutionary struggle for detente with "imperialists." This threatened to undermine Kremlin claims of leadership in revolutionary movements. The Soviets had to compete with the Chinese in leading the world revolution, and the result was a resuscitated militancy in Soviet foreign policy.

One manifestation of this reversal was the U-2 incident of 1960. American reconnaissance aircraft had been making overflights of Soviet territory for some years, and the Soviet leadership was well aware of them. Gromyko advised Khrushchev not to shoot down the planes so as to avoid excessive deterioration in Soviet-American relations. In Gromyko's judgment, a strong protest and warning could forestall further overflights. Khrushchev dismissed Gromyko's counsel, and when Soviet antiaircraft defenses shot down a U-2 and * captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, Khrushchev decided to set a trap to disgrace Dwight Eisenhower publicly. Powers was alive in Soviet hands, but Khrushchev, concealing this, tricked Eisenhower, luring him into denials concerning the overflights.

Khrushchev's scheme was nearly revealed prematurely. In conversation with an ambassador from one of the socialist countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Yakov Malik could not resist the temptation to show off. He told the envoy that the U-2 pilot was alive and would testify publicly. Fortunately for Khrushchev's hoax, the ambassador was security conscious and immediately informed the Central Committee of this chat.

Furious, Khrushchev decided to expel Malik from the party and dismiss him from his post. During an audience with the Premier, Malik apparently fell to his knees and wept as he begged forgiveness. By this time Khrushchev's U-2 scheme had come to fruition, and he contented himself with a humiliating punishment for Malik: ordering him to make a public confession at a party meeting of the entire Foreign Ministry.

The ministry's conference hall, with its marble columns and rostrum, was overflowing. Mounting the rostrum, obviously pained and embarrassed, Malik bleated, "Comrades, I have never before revealed state secrets." Everyone howled with laughter. In another time he would have ended up in prison or worse; now he received only a strogach (severe reprimand).

AT SEA WITH A HARDY LEADER

In 1960 I sailed aboard the small Soviet passenger liner Baltika from Kaliningrad to New York with Khrushchev and the leaders of several other socialist countries. At age 29, an anonymous foot soldier of Soviet diplomacy, I had the extraordinary opportunity of being assigned to work with the head of our party and the Premier of our country on what was to be a major presentation on decolonization and disarmament to the U.N. General Assembly.

A savage gale broke out, and the little, 7,500-ton ship tossed as the Atlantic heaved. The majority of the passengers and a good half of the ship's crew were seasick. Khrushchev, however, remained hardy and undaunted. He continued to go to the restaurant in high spirits, deriding those who, in his words, had shown themselves to be weaklings.

I lay in my berth almost the entire day, getting up only to run to the bathroom. But Nikolai Molyakov, deputy chief of the Department of International Organizations, taunted me. The best medicine for seasickness was to toss down "200 grams" of vodka, he said, urging me to accompany him to the bar. His suggestion made me feel even sicker, but I thought perhaps it would be more pleasant to die in the bar than on my bunk.

A number of Khrushchev's intimates were there, all tipsy, telling bawdy stories and evaluating the charms of the stewardesses, waitresses and secretaries on the staff of the delegation. Those of us from the Foreign Ministry were usually careful because Gromyko did not like us drinking and talking too much. But we knew that he, unlike Khrushchev, would never appear in the bar, considering it beneath his dignity.

Although Khrushchev valued Gromyko's diplomatic experience, he could not resist teasing him, often calling him an arid bureaucrat. "Look at that," Khrushchev would say, nodding toward Gromyko and smiling. "How young Andrei Andreyevich looks." (He really did look very young for his years.) "He doesn't have a single gray hair. It's obvious he just sits in a cozy little place and drinks tea." These jests were not at all pleasing to Gromyko, but he always managed to force a smile.

Khrushchev said on another occasion, "Andrei Andreyevich is an excellent diplomat and tactician; he knows negotiations from A to Z. But as an ideologist and theoretician he's rather poor. He has little taste for theorizing. But we're working on him. We'll make something of him yet."

One evening Khrushchev, who as usual had been drinking heavily, decided to have some fun with Nikolai Podgorny, who at the time held Khrushchev's old job as party boss of the Ukraine and later became a member of the Politburo. Khrushchev turned to Podgorny. "Why don't you dance a gopak for us? I miss Ukrainian dances and songs."

The gopak is a strenuous national dance, performed in a squatting position, with the men rapidly kicking one leg out and then the other, all the time moving around a large circle. Podgorny looked at Khrushchev in amazement. He was in his 60s. Khrushchev egged him on. Podgorny realized his leader was not joking. With obvious reluctance, he stood up and awkwardly bobbed up and down a few times. Khrushchev clapped loudly and praised Podgorny. "Well done!" he said. "You are in the right place there in Kiev."

Emboldened by the gregarious informality aboard ship, I decided to risk voicing my concerns about our latest approach to disarmament. The promise of "serious negotiations" on arms reductions had drawn me to the Foreign * Ministry, but now there was a shift away from realistic talks toward the propaganda program of general and complete disarmament. Cautiously, I suggested to Khrushchev that propaganda could not replace the real talks needed to make progress in stopping the arms race.

I was somewhat surprised that he heard me out. Then he said that there could be two levels of work in the field: his campaign for general and complete disarmament as a propaganda effort with a foundation of real negotiations on concrete, if limited steps. "Every vegetable has its season," he said. "Never forget the appeal that the idea of disarmament has in the outside world. All you have to do is say, 'I'm in favor of it,' and that pays big dividends."

Admitting with a grin that he expected neither the West nor the Soviet Union to disarm completely, he added, "A seductive slogan is the most powerful political instrument. The Americans don't understand that. They only hurt themselves in struggling against the idea of general and complete disarmament. What they are doing is as futile as Don Quixote's fighting the windmills." Propaganda and true negotiations, he said, should be not contradictory but complementary.

After we sailed south to avoid the storm, Khrushchev began to spend more time on deck. Once I saw him standing alone, leaning on the ship's railing and looking through his binoculars at the bright ocean. Just as I approached him his arm slipped and he lost his balance. I held him up. He turned to me and said with a gay sparkle in his eyes, "If I were to fall overboard that wouldn't be a calamity. Right now we aren't too far from Cuba, and they'd probably receive me there better than the Americans will in New York.

"I hope," he mused more seriously, "that Cuba will become a beacon of socialism in Latin America. Castro offers that hope, and the Americans are helping us." He said that instead of establishing normal relations with Cuba, the U.S. was doing all it could to drive Castro to the wall by organizing a campaign against him, stirring up the Latin American countries and imposing an economic blockade on Cuba. "That's stupid," he exclaimed, "and it's a result of the howls of zealous anti-Communists in the U.S. who see red everywhere, though possibly something is only rose-colored or even white."

Then, having smacked his lips with gusto as if anticipating a tasty meal, he predicted, "Castro will have to gravitate to us like an iron filing to a magnet."

While Cuba was a subject that gave him pleasure, the Congo was an annoyance to him. Throughout the voyage he was obsessed with the U.N.'s involvement in the Congo, especially the performance of the U.N. peace-keeping troops there and the activities of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. "I spit on the U.N.," he raged. "It's not our organization. That good-for-nothing Ham (the Russian word for boor applied as a nickname to the U.N. chief) is sticking his nose in important affairs which are none of his business. He has seized authority that doesn't belong to him. He must pay for that. We have to get rid of him by any means. We'll really make it hot for him," he growled.

Khrushchev's personal threat against Hammarskjold returned to my memory in September 1961, when the Secretary-General died in a mysterious plane crash in the Congo. Friends working on African affairs once told me they had seen a top-secret KGB report indicating that the aircraft had been shot down by pro- Soviet Congolese forces penetrated and guided by operatives from the U.S.S.R.

After our arrival in New York, during a session at the U.N., Spain's Foreign Minister Fernando Castiella took the floor to respond to an attack by Khrushchev on General Franco. Khrushchev blew up. He began to shout insults at the Spaniard, punctuating them by pounding his fists on the desk and then, having removed his shoe, banging it resoundingly on the desk too. Then he leaped from his chair and brandished his fists at the frail, undersized Castiella, who assumed a comical defensive pose. Security guards rushed up and separated them. We were stunned at Khrushchev's behavior. At the mission afterward, everyone was embarrassed and upset. Gromyko, noted for his strict, impeccable behavior, was white-lipped with agitation. But Khrushchev acted as if nothing at all had happened. He was laughing loudly and joking. It had been necessary, he said, to "inject a little life into the stuffy atmosphere of the U.N."

KENNEDY AND THE MISSILE CRISIS

When Khrushchev left New York in mid-October 1960, the U.S. was nearing its presidential election. Publicly, Khrushchev claimed to be indifferent to the outcome. He had called Richard Nixon and John Kennedy "a pair of boots," explaining: "You can't say which is better, the left or the right." In private he had a different attitude. At a luncheon before his departure, he became angry at the mention of Nixon's name: "He's a typical product of McCarthyism, a puppet of the most reactionary circles in the U.S. We'll never be able to find a common language with him." He said that "we can influence the American presidential election." He related how he saw through the Americans when the Eisenhower Administration asked us to release U-2 Pilot Powers. "We would never give Nixon such a present!" he exclaimed.

Khrushchev and Kennedy met in Vienna in June 1961. Leonid Zamyatin, deputy chief of the Department of the U.S. in the Foreign Ministry, told me about it. Zamyatin's amazing aplomb and self-assurance helped compensate for a lack of talent and enabled him to promote himself. He later became director-general of TASS and eventually chief of the Central Committee's International Information Department. With Georgi Arbatov and Vadim Zagladin, he was part of a troika of the most familiar Soviet faces appearing in the West when the Kremlin needed to influence public opinion.

Zamyatin told me that the Vienna meeting had amounted to no more than the two heads of state taking each other's measure. The Premier, Zamyatin said, had concluded that Kennedy was a mere "boy," who would be vulnerable to pressure. "At present," he continued, "Nikita Sergeyevich is thinking about what we can do in our interest and at the same time subject Kennedy to a test of strength."

Khrushchev figured that Kennedy would accept almost anything to avoid nuclear war. The lack of confidence the President displayed during both the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Berlin Wall crisis four months later further confirmed this view. At the end of 1961 I attended a meeting in the office of Khrushchev's personal assistants. Someone remarked that Khrushchev, to put it mildly, didn't think very highly of Kennedy. At that moment, the Premier entered the room and immediately began to lecture us about Kennedy's "wishy-washy" behavior, saying: "I know for certain that Kennedy doesn't have a strong backbone, nor, generally speaking, does he have the courage to stand up to a serious challenge."

By installing several dozen medium-range missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev aimed to create a nuclear "fist" close to the U.S. The Soviet Union could get a "cheap" nuclear deterrent that would threaten New York, Washington and other vital centers along the East Coast, accomplishing much with very little.

In the West, there has been a view that Khrushchev undertook the Cuban operation at the instigation of the military. This is incorrect. Khrushchev imposed an arbitrary decision on the political and military leaders. They were not interested in "quick fixes" and surrogate nuclear missile capability. They wanted solid, long-range programs to achieve parity with the U.S. in both quantity and quality of strategic nuclear weaponry and later to pursue superiority. That would take time and would involve astronomical expense, but there was no risk. But such expenditures would inevitably undermine Khrushchev's plans to aid the consumer. Khrushchev had unrealistically committed himself with widely touted promises "to catch up with and surpass America" by 1970 in overall production. He wanted guns and butter, or a modest amount of butter anyway.

Once the Cuban missile crisis developed, in October 1962, Khrushchev had only two options: nuclear war, for which the U.S. was much better prepared; or a war limited to the area, also advantageous to the U.S. Given the American geographical position and strength in the area, the Soviets would find it costly to penetrate the blockade imposed by Kennedy or defend their ships. Vladimir Buzykin, head of the Latin American Department of the Foreign Ministry, told me that there was no contingency plan in the event the Cuban operation failed. By establishing the quarantine, Kennedy had presented Khrushchev with a fait accompli instead of the other way around.

As a result of the missile crisis, military arguments prevailed: the Soviet Union opted for numbers and quality of strategic nuclear weapons. In ensuing years, whenever opposition to the idea was voiced, someone would be sure to say, "Remember Cuba?" I recall a usually calm Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov declaring emotionally that in the future we would "never tolerate such humiliation as we suffered in the missile crisis." Khrushchev had to forget butter.

SUDDEN CHANGES AT THE TOP

In the summer of 1963 I joined the Soviet mission to the U.N. Ambassador Nikolai Fedorenko, head of the mission, was an elegant man and a lenient boss whose consuming interest in foreign affairs lay in China. He was a true expert, a member of the Academy of Sciences. As time went on, he delegated more and more responsibility to others and retreated into scholarly pursuits. This earned him Gromyko's distrust.

To Gromyko, there could be no greater sin than a casual approach to one's duties. His reputation had earned him the nickname Grom, the Russian word for thunder. One victim of his thunderbolts was Rolland Timerbayev, a senior political officer in the U.N. mission, who had the thankless task of supervising the mission's move from Park Avenue to East 67th Street. When Gromyko was shown the completed work that autumn, he spent more than half an hour stuck between floors in a faulty elevator. Finally freed, he decided that Timerbayev should have a new career. "Let him sit at the reception desk and keep an eye on the elevator to make sure it's working." The poor man occupied his new post for the rest of Gromyko's stay.

But Gromyko's annoyance with Fedorenko went further than deep dislike for his personal style--long hair, flashy clothes, bow ties, all of which clashed with the strict, official appearance Gromyko thought should be standard for serious men. Gromyko also envied his status in the Academy of Sciences. Fedorenko, like Yakov Malik, who later replaced him as Ambassador, detested Gromyko. But unlike Malik, who was a lion with his subordinates and a mouse with Gromyko, Fedorenko did not fear the minister.

By 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev's view of Kennedy had changed. He perceived Kennedy as the one who had accelerated improvement of relations and as a man of strength and determination, the one thing the Kremlin understands and respects.

When Kennedy was shot, Moscow firmly believed that the assassination was a scheme by "reactionary forces" within the U.S. seeking to damage the new trend in relations. The Kremlin ridiculed the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald had acted on his own. There was widespread speculation among Soviet diplomats that Lyndon Johnson, along with the CIA and the Mafia, had masterminded the plot. Johnson was anathema to Khrushchev. Because he was a Southerner, Moscow considered him a racist (the stereotype of any American politician from below the Mason-Dixon line), an anti-Soviet, and anti-Communist to boot. Further, since Johnson was from Texas, a center of the reactionary forces in the U.S., according to the Soviets, he was associated with the big-time capitalism of the oil industry, also known to be anti- Soviet. He "smells oily," it was said in Moscow.

Almost a year later, in October 1964, there was an upheaval in our leadership--another palace coup against Khrushchev, this time successful. Americans invariably seek a single main reason for any important action. Soviets don't approach things that way. There were many reasons--all important ^ --why Khrushchev was evicted from power.

Bureaucrats had been alarmed over the new rules governing party organization that Khrushchev had virtually imposed. City and regional officials were to have more frequent elections and a tenure of no more than six years. Nothing could have disturbed functionaries more. They could no longer count on a sinecure as a lifelong career.

Khrushchev's revelation of Stalin's crimes antagonized the KGB. The military resented his decision to reduce excess manpower in the army, forcing a large number of officers into retirement. His adventure in Cuba had ended in disgrace.

If there was a last straw, however, it was probably his determination to order yet another shake-up of the party apparatus at the coming November plenum of the Central Committee. This time it was to involve not only mid- level apparatchiki but higher cadre as well. Thus he encroached upon the holy of holies, the sanctum of the ruling class. Khrushchev's meddling could no longer be tolerated.

Fedorenko told me what happened next. Mikhail Suslov and Alexei Kosygin were the prime movers against Khrushchev. Suslov seemed satisfied to be the party patriarch and main ideologist. Kosygin was happy to be Chairman of the Council of Ministers and play the major role in both domestic economic and foreign policies. But it was hard for them to agree on who should be First Secretary of the Central Committee.

They finally settled on a dark horse: Leonid Brezhnev, then the figurehead Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the rubber-stamp parliament. They did not anticipate his further advance. Aware of his rather low intellect, they were convinced that this unprepossessing man would be unable to hold his own against them.

One exception was Gromyko. During Khrushchev's time he made a decision, which proved to be inspired, to cultivate Brezhnev. While others saw Brezhnev as a colorless, unimaginative party careerist without distinction, luck and instinct made Gromyko see something more. Gromyko took Brezhnev's responsibilities as nominal head of state seriously.

Gromyko also strengthened his personal ties to Brezhnev, taking up hunting so that he could join Brezhnev at his favorite sport. Until then, Gromyko had limited his exercise to morning workouts with barbells and occasional walks. If his hunting started as a political avocation, however, it became a real delight to him. I have never seen him as cheerful as he was one Sunday in 1972 when he entered his Vnukovo dacha before lunchtime proudly bearing a mangled duck he had brought down that morning, smiling with a sincere pleasure he rarely, if ever, shows the world. Through Brezhnev, whom he called by the nickname Lyonya, Gromyko achieved not just security but genuine authority over Soviet foreign policy.

Brezhnev moved very cautiously at first. A professional party apparatchik, he began to strengthen his position among his cronies and those with similar experiences and like views. By the spring of 1966, when I arrived back in Moscow from New York, Brezhnev had created a broader base of support. His power was becoming entrenched. Moscow jokesters were among the first to depict the attitude of the new leadership. Fedorenko told me a story that illustrated Brezhnev's power and the age-old Russian love of wordplay: A worker asked Brezhnev how to address him. He responded bashfully: "Just call me Ilyich." That was Brezhnev's patronymic--the same as Lenin's--and indicated that Brezhnev was far from bashful.

I saw that the egotistical image portrayed in the anecdotes around town was not far off the mark when I met Brezhnev while working on President de Gaulle's visit to Moscow in June 1966. For a long time after World War II, De Gaulle was portrayed by students at the Institute of International Relations as a chicken-brained cog in the military wheel, with pompous ambitions and fascistic dictatorial tendencies. Top political people regularly disparaged him, calling him a "long-nosed frog's legs." But now he was paying an official visit to Moscow, and I was asked to help in preparations.

During a meeting about the De Gaulle visit, I was struck by the contrast between Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Brezhnev's well-tailored suit, an elegant shirt with French cuffs and a pretentiously mannered style were very far from Khrushchev's baggy clothes and hearty, unaffected approach. Brezhnev exuded smug self-confidence, but he was also pleasant and cordial. After some small talk he slowly read the material prepared by us. I sensed in his platitudinous observations about our proposals that he was not sure what he was talking about.

Unlike Khrushchev, Brezhnev seemed to have no ideas of his own to contribute. He seemed to dramatize the truth of another joke making the rounds: "There can be no personality cult where there is no personality." Brezhnev was certainly no visionary, or even an intellectual. His strength was ^ that he was a man of unusual organizational ability. He also had a gift for compromise and was adept at maintaining a fine balance among different--even opposing--forces. He was an uninspiring leader whose illusion of strong and steady helmsmanship was mainly a scaffolding built by his subordinates.

Kosygin retained his role as Kremlin spokesman on foreign affairs, although his position was much weakened by Brezhnev's expanded authority in the field. Kosygin had risen and survived by pursuing a technocrat's career. Dry even by Soviet standards, free of personal foibles or idiosyncrasies, he was so ascetic that in New York, his daughter Ludmilla, armed with a long shopping list of her own, could not think of anything to buy that her father would want or need.

I believed that Kosygin, out of self-preservation, deliberately chose to avoid the many intrigues and power plays in the Kremlin. Later on, Brezhnev pushed him still further aside, and several times Kosygin submitted his resignation to the Politburo. Although there was little rapport between the two men, Brezhnev turned these offers down and continued to pretend respect for Kosygin while in fact ignoring his views more and more. Once Brezhnev took command of foreign affairs, he edged Kosygin aside altogether and moved Gromyko from the role of mentor and confidant to that of co-architect.

THE SIX-DAY WAR

On Sunday evening, June 4, 1967, I was with Fedorenko at Glen Cove. Over a glass of cognac we discussed the growing tensions in the Middle East. About 4 a.m. the next morning we got word that war had broken out between Egypt and Israel. Fedorenko said we should return to the Soviet mission immediately for instructions from Moscow.

Our first meeting was with the Egyptian representative, Mohammed El-Kony, a total mediocrity. He was cheerful, insisting that reports of Egypt's loss of its air force were inaccurate. "We deceived the Israelis. They bombed some of our false airfields, where we deliberately placed fake plywood airplane models. We shall see who wins this war."

I was far from sure his evaluation was correct, and I said as much to Fedorenko, who agreed: "One can hardly trust the Arabs. There is no limit to their stupidity. Let's wait and see what Moscow says."

In the Security Council, the figure who stood out was Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, the American permanent representative, our vigorous and formidable opponent. Fedorenko and others in our delegation referred to him as a "slick / Jew who could fool the devil himself." But while they disparaged him, they envied his talents.

Goldberg insisted there be an immediate cease-fire. He informally suggested that the cease-fire be coupled with a pullback of Israeli and Arab forces (Syria, Jordan and Iraq had also begun operations against Israel). I advised Fedorenko to try to influence the Arabs to accept. He agreed, but El- Kony was adamant. I thought the Arabs were making a terrible mistake. They seemed to be quickly losing the war.

Around mid-morning on June 6, we received a telephone call on an open line from Moscow--an extraordinary occurrence--from the Deputy Foreign Minister, Vladimir Semyonov. Our new orders were to accept Goldberg's idea. If it proved impossible to get a decision on that basis, we were to agree to the Security Council's proposed resolution on a cease-fire as the first step. The instructions, signed by Gromyko, stressed, "You must do that, even if the Arab countries do not agree--repeat do not agree."

When Fedorenko finally got to Goldberg, it was too late. The U.S. now insisted only upon an immediate cease-fire. The battle had quickly proved decisively to favor Israel, and the U.S. was no longer willing to settle for a pullback.

The lesson of the Six-Day War should have been clear. Whether the client was Egypt or Syria, South Yemen, Iraq or the Palestinians, the Kremlin's purpose was always the same: to establish and widen Soviet power in the Middle East, to use the area and its rivalries as a means of contesting and undermining Western strength. Party policymakers regarded the Arab world as fertile ground for furthering Soviet ideology. Military strategists saw its geography in terms of transit and servicing for Soviet ships in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, as staging areas for troops, as proving grounds for Soviet weaponry. Against these drives diplomats could bring little moderating force to bear.

But while the Soviet Union was ready to supply weapons to some Arab countries, to train their armies with Soviet advisers, to give them economic aid, it was not prepared to risk military confrontation with the U.S. in the region. Soviet leaders were eager to establish their influence in Arab countries, but had never been willing to defend their clients effectively. On the contrary, the war demonstrated the Soviet willingness to turn away from these countries in a critical moment after having encouraged the passions that precipitated the showdown.

/ TROUBLESOME

NEIGHBORS

The following year, in early August 1968, I left New York for vacation in the Soviet Union. When I arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, I found the offices of Gromyko and Kuznetsov in turmoil. In Czechoslovakia, liberalizing reforms had got out of hand, at least in the Politburo's view, and led to an invasion by Soviet tanks and troops in August 1968.

After Khrushchev's ouster, the military was directed by the party Presidium to create a mobile force for such emergencies, for use not only in Soviet bloc countries but in any part of the world. This program provided for construction of aircraft carriers, helicopters and military transport planes capable of carrying light tanks, cannons and tactical missiles, and also for training a special paratrooper force headed by officers who spoke foreign languages. The mobile force is much stronger and more sophisticated today than when it moved against the Prague government in 1968. When I learned of the preparations for an invasion of Czechoslovakia, I felt lucky not to be in New York trying to defend the Soviet position.

The next major crisis I witnessed came in early March 1969, and that one I did observe from New York. Fedorenko's successor Yakov Malik and I were in his office when the code cable operator gave Malik a dispatch from Moscow marked VERY URGENT. A Chinese army unit had invaded Damansky Island, in the Ussuri River on the Soviet-Chinese border, killing and wounding several dozen Soviet soldiers. This was the latest--and worst--of a series of border incidents over several years. Malik turned pale. I had seen him angry many times, but this was a level of fury I had never witnessed in him.

"Now those squint-eyed bastards will get a lesson they'll never forget," he screamed. "Who do they think they are? We'll kill those yellow sons of bitches." He raved on, calling the Chinese all the names he could think of, names in which the Russian language is rich.

The pre-eminent Soviet expert on Asia, and China in particular, was Mikhail Kapitsa. Erudite and capable, gregarious and jovial, Kapitsa would undoubtedly have moved faster if he had not received a black mark in his dossier and a deep scar on his head when, as Ambassador to Pakistan in 1961, he took up with his driver's wife. The chauffeur discovered the liaison. Rushing into the Ambassador's office, where Kapitsa was using his couch as a bed, the infuriated husband clouted the diplomat on the head with a crowbar. He might have killed Kapitsa if aides had not come to his rescue. But the incident was forgiven because Kapitsa's expertise was needed.

I later asked Kapitsa how it could have happened that more than 30 of our frontier guards had been killed on Damansky Island and why they had been so obviously unprepared to respond effectively. "The Chinese completely surprised us," he answered. "The Politburo, despite all the tensions in our relations with Peking, had no idea they would do anything like that." According to Kapitsa, the events on Damansky had had the effect of an electric shock on Moscow. The Politburo was terrified that the Chinese might make a large-scale intrusion into Soviet territory that China claimed. A nightmare vision of invasion by millions of Chinese made the Soviet leaders almost frantic. Despite our overwhelming superiority in weaponry, it would not be easy to cope with an assault of such magnitude.

Kapitsa also said the Soviet leadership had come close to using nuclear arms on China. He had been at the Politburo discussion. He said that Marshal Andrei Grechko, the Defense Minister, actively advocated a plan "once and for all to get rid of the Chinese threat." Grechko, a dim-witted martinet replaced by Dimitri Ustinov in 1976, called for unrestricted use of the multimegaton bomb known in the West as the "blockbuster." The bomb would release enormous amounts of radioactive fallout, not only killing millions of Chinese but threatening Soviet citizens in the Far East and people in other countries bordering China.

Fortunately, not many military men shared Grechko's mad, bellicose stance. In 1970 I talked with Nikolai Ogarkov, a well-educated, sophisticated and intelligent officer. Later named First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff, he has since been demoted. Ogarkov took a more realistic view of the prospect of war with China. He felt that the Soviet Union could not attack China with a nuclear barrage because it would inevitably mean world war.

The alternative was to use a limited number of nuclear weapons in a "surgical operation" to intimidate the Chinese and destroy their nuclear facilities. But, according to Ogarkov, a bomb or two would hardly annihilate a country like China, and the Chinese, with their vast population and deep knowledge and experience of guerrilla warfare, would fight unrelentingly. The Soviet Union would be mired in an endless war with consequences similar to those suffered by America in Viet Nam.

Grechko's opponents prevailed, happily, and no military option was exercised, nuclear or otherwise. But the long border with China remained a highly volatile area.

AT GROMYKO'S

RIGHT HAND

When Gromyko, on a visit to New York in 1969, offered me a post as his adviser, I accepted with alacrity and anticipation. In April 1970 my wife Lina, my daughter Anna, then eight years old, and I left New York to take up my new duties.

Gromyko's senior assistant was Vasily Makarov. High-ranking diplomats gave him expensive presents to grease the way for their reports to Gromyko or their appointments to coveted jobs. Makarov accepted these as his due; he would even commission purchases for himself, once telling me pointedly how much he needed a rug of a certain size and color.

Makarov was a surly, pompous, sarcastic contrast to Gromyko's cool but generally courteous personality. Gromyko kept him as the perfect watchdog. He scared off intruders. He sheltered his master from unnecessary contacts with lesser humans. Gromyko is an efficient machine, constructed to perform and to endure, and almost completely devoid of human warmth. He can joke and he can rage, but underlying any such expression is a cold discipline that makes him formidable as a superior or as an adversary.

Gromyko inhabits a cocoon as though born to it. I do not believe he has ever had close friends. Inside the Stalin-era skyscraper that houses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Gromyko takes a special elevator, reserved for him and a few very senior officials, straight to his seventh-floor office. There, except for a meal in a private dining room, he stays all day, reading those documents that Makarov and others on his personal staff feel it is essential to show him, seeing a carefully screened group of senior ministry officials or top foreign visitors, talking on the special Kremlin telephone system, the Vertushka, to those of his rank outside the ministry.

As his daughter Emilia once said to me, "My father lives in the skies. For 25 years he has not set foot on the streets of Moscow. All he sees is the view from his car window."

At the same time, he is an excellent family man; he has a well-deserved reputation for being faithful and solicitous to his wife Lidiya. Her influence upon him is considerable; she is the one person he listens to attentively. Her advice extends beyond their personal life to government affairs, particularly in the selection of people for top posts at the ministry. A ministry wag once dubbed her "the real chief of the personnel department."

Gromyko is a tough boss. Not only does he expect anyone he calls to appear instantly, but his most desultory suggestion is to be observed as a crisis order. Shortly after I joined his staff, he put me to work on his address to the U.N. in the fall and told me casually to find the right people to work on the project. Early the following week he asked me whom I had chosen. I said I would soon have a roster for him. His head snapped toward me, and he fixed me with a finger stabbing the air as he raved for a good half-hour about my being a stupid, irresponsible ass who did not have the ears to hear his instructions. Yet the next day he greeted me in his usual manner.

An order to report to his office inevitably strikes dread in the recipient, even a Deputy Foreign Minister. Impatience rather than vindictiveness is Gromyko's hallmark in dealing with those who rank beneath him. That is typical of top Soviet bureaucrats. They are rude to their underlings to demonstrate their own importance. Gromyko will often call a meeting of his three or four ranking assistants and, if he is in a bad mood, vilify them as "dolts" or "schoolboys" who are "not fit to work in the Foreign Ministry." A report with a few minor errors or a document submitted late can touch off one of these explosions, though it usually passes quickly.

Gromyko has little interest in the Third World. He would rarely see Foreign Ministry officials concerned with developing countries and, despite countless invitations, has never visited any black African nation. Except for Cuba, he has never been to a Latin American country. China interests him primarily through the prism of Moscow-Washington-Peking politics. I once had an argument about all this with Vadim Zagladin, deputy to Boris Ponomarev, chief of the Central Committee's International Department. Speaking of Africa, I remarked on the futility of "playing with some pissant little 'liberation' committees that come into being overnight and disappear after a few months." Zagladin's response was revealing: "You sound just like your boss. Gromyko has no smell for the ideological side of things. He's just too pragmatic, and so are you. You Foreign Ministry people don't understand the power of Communist ideas in the world and the way to exploit them."

Gromyko sent me abroad several times as his representative. My diplomatic mission to Africa in 1971 was depressingly instructive. Because of economic deficiencies and bureaucratic inertia at home we would be hard put to meet the expectations our expansionist diplomacy aroused. Instead of gaining friends, we would, in many instances, lose credibility. In their own policies toward the Third World, it seemed difficult for Americans to realize that a number of these initially Moscow-oriented countries did not want to emulate the Soviet model. The West's great advantage is that, except in a state of war, in the long run economic assistance will always pay bigger dividends than will military aid.

That same year, 1971, I was also sent to sound out Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania on a treaty to liquidate chemical and biological weapons. The Soviet Union has consistently depicted itself as a leader in the effort to destroy these ghastly weapons. In fact, it has always continued to expand its sophisticated chemical and biological weapons production programs.

The military branch responsible for this sickening business has a huge department in the Defense Ministry. It has rejected any kind of international control. Several times I asked officials there why they were so adamant. The response: control (in the Soviet context, this word usually means on-site inspection) was out of the question because it could reveal the extent of the development of these weapons and Soviet readiness for their eventual use. There is no question that the U.S.S.R. is much better prepared than the U.S. for this type of warfare.

Because of my U.N. work, Gromyko regarded me as something of a Middle East expert. He ordered me to follow events in the area. Analysts in the Middle East Department were worried. "Things are bad," one of them told me early in 1971, referring to the fact that the Egyptians were stalling Moscow on concluding a long-sought treaty of friendship designed to bind Cairo firmly into an alliance. A friend told me, "Opinions are beginning to solidify in the leadership that we have to be rid of (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat. Sadat is a scoundrel. The only problem is that we don't have a really strong figure to take over from him. But there are some possibilities."

I must have showed my surprise. "Are people really planning something? How do you know about this?"

"I don't know all the details myself," he admitted. "But I have my own contacts with the KGB. They've gone far enough in thinking this out so that they have a general plan to take care of Sadat--to liquidate him. Of course, not by their own hands. They have people, though, who are getting ready to act."

A friend on the Central Committee staff also remarked to me that Sadat should go "one way or another." In a short time, however, the option vanished: Sadat moved against his domestic opposition, arresting his Vice President, Ali Sabry, whom we favored, and six other Cabinet members, and eventually charging them with high treason.

NIXON, KISSINGER AND DETENTE

I was extensively involved in preparing for Richard Nixon's visit to Moscow in May 1972. In a pre-summit meeting in Gromyko's office, as we were trying to think of a suitable gift for Nixon, Gromyko remarked, "Almost all Americans have some kind of hobby. Does anyone know what Nixon's is?" After a moment of head shaking around the table, Gromyko said dryly, "I think what he'd really like is a guarantee to stay in the White House forever." Soviet leaders did find in Nixon's behavior definite similarities to their own, and concluded that it might be possible to deal with him in the world of realpolitik.

When Henry Kissinger had begun his triangular diplomacy by secretly visiting Peking the year before, it was a shock to the Soviet leadership. Gromyko went about for weeks with a black expression. His deputy Makarov said that Brezhnev had given Gromyko a thorough dressing-down for not anticipating the American-Chinese rapprochement.

At the same time, the Americans were able to put in place the Soviet side of the triangle by promising to accept the principle of equality between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. This was the most powerful boost to Soviet egos, suffering for years under an inferiority complex. Moscow would have been happy if the summit meeting with Nixon had produced nothing more than a declaration of principles including equality.

At one point I teased Anatoli Dobrynin about how easy a time he must be having in Washington with Kissinger. Dobrynin took my remark seriously and blurted out that Kissinger was not as nice in most negotiations and that you had to be constantly alert with him. "Before you can open your mouth, he'll find out things he can use against you later," he said.

Gromyko interjected, "And he's as slippery as a snake--he doesn't let anyone see what's on his mind." Gromyko made his observation without any hostility. Even with an adversary, what counted with Gromyko was seriousness. % He found Kissinger serious. He took enormous pains to prepare for each meeting with him, approaching the sessions with the eagerness of a bridegroom on his wedding night.

The Soviet leaders enjoyed working with Kissinger so much that in Gromyko's inner cabinet after the Moscow summit he was referred to by his Russian nickname, Kisa (pussycat). In no way did this mean that they viewed him as easy to deal with or as being in their corner, but it has always been the Russian custom to devise fond nicknames for people they like and respect.

Gromyko assesses the U.S. in terms of its might and its potential as a rival in world affairs. Like many of his colleagues, Gromyko respects American power. Unlike a number of others, however, he strongly believes that the U.S. is not only the Soviet Union's main adversary but in some respects also a partner, as long as the interests of both nations--temporary or more long term --are parallel or coincide. To the extent that he can, he pursues a course of making the relationship with America the most important area of diplomacy.

Western speculation has given Gromyko the dubious honor of being the single most influential initiator of the Kremlin's ultrahard line toward the U.S. in the 1980s. This speculation seems to me far wide of the mark. Gromyko was much more an architect of detente with the U.S. than a simple executor, and he is associated with it more intimately than any other present Politburo member. He clashed with the staunchly anti-American Defense Minister Grechko over detente to such an extent that the two men were sometimes not on speaking terms for weeks. Gromyko's views prevailed in the end.

It was in fact Gromyko, not Dobrynin, who was at the Soviet end of the Kissinger-Dobrynin diplomatic channel during the Nixon Administration. When Dobrynin's reports arrived in Moscow, Gromyko was the first to receive them; he decided to whom they should be shown, and his proposals served as the basis for decisions on Soviet-American affairs. Gromyko also tried to restrain --often in vain--the anti-American zeal of that quintessential cold warrior at the U.N., Yakov Malik.

Why, then, has not Gromyko's ascendancy become a moderating factor in helping overcome the chill in relations between Moscow and Washington? The chill, of course, is the result neither of one man's policy, powerful though he may be, nor of any single event. Gromyko shares power with other key partners in the collective leadership that runs the Kremlin. And all of them, including Gromyko, are just now more belligerent and hypersensitive than usual. Not only has the Kremlin suffered serious setbacks, internationally and internally, in recent years, but it is still beleaguered by a transition in leadership. A hard, aggressive response and tight cohesion among themselves are the traditional Soviet defensive reflex whenever the leaders feel that the West might think them vulnerable.

This is also Gromyko's philosophy. But it is quite possible that he is even more distressed than his colleagues, as he views the best achievements of his life's work crumbling. Still, it is likely that, barring illness or accident, Gromyko will be around for some time. And I would not be surprised to see him, like the persistent bulldog he is and at the proper time, again try to restore Soviet-American detente, even if he must do it--in one of his own favorite phrases--"brick by brick."