A. A. Gromyko is a politician whose name is associated with the golden age of Soviet diplomacy. A favorite of Stalin and Brezhnev, not so revered by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Andrei Andreevich really played a prominent role in the political arena of the 20th century. Biography of Gromyko, nicknamed in the West "Mister NO", is filled with fateful moments. It was through his efforts that the Cuban missile crisis did not develop into a nuclear war.
In February 1957, Andrei Andreevich Gromyko was appointed to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. He worked in this position for 28 years, this record has not been broken until now. Throughout his career, the minister allowed himself to have and express his own opinion, which is different from the opinion of the country's leadership. Foreign colleagues called Gromyko "Mister" No " for his intransigence and unwillingness to give up their positions in the negotiations. To this, the minister retorted that he had heard "No" from foreign diplomats more often than they had heard his "No".
Biography
The story about A. A. Gromyko should begin with his father. Andrei Matveyevich was by nature an inquisitive person and partly an adventurer. In his youth, in the midst of the Stolypin reforms, he ventured to go to Canada to earn money. Upon his return, he was drafted to war with the Japanese. Having seen the world, having learned to speak a little English, the father passed on to his son the accumulated experience, told many amazing stories about everyday life and battles, the life and traditions of overseas peoples. Returning to his native village of Starye Gromyki in the Gomel region in Belarus, Andrei Matveyevich married Olga Bakarevich.
Andrey was born on July 5 (18), 1909. He was not the only child. He had three brothers and a sister. From the age of 13, Andrei began to work. He helped his father on timber rafting, did agricultural work. He studied a lot and with enthusiasm. He graduated from a seven-year school, college, agricultural technical school and in 1931 became a student at the Minsk Economic Institute. After 2 courses he was sent to a rural school to eliminate illiteracy. He graduated from the institute in absentia. And in 1936 he defended his Ph. D. thesis at the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR and was sent to Moscow to the Research Institute of Agriculture.
Thanks to the knowledge of foreign languages and the worker-peasant origin, Andrei Gromyko was transferred to the USSR People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Since then, the career of the future minister has skyrocketed. Head of the Department of American Countries of the NKID, Advisor to the Plenipotentiary Ambassador to the United States and Cuba. During the Great Patriotic War, he was involved in the preparation of conferences in Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam. He took part in two of them. He headed the Soviet delegation in Dumbarton Oaks (USA), where the fate of the post-war world order was decided, and a decision was made to create the United Nations. It is his signature that stands under the UN Charter. Then he was the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, First Deputy Foreign Minister, Ambassador to Great Britain.
In 1957, Andrei Gromyko replaced Dmitry Shepilov as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, who himself had recommended Gromyko to NS Khrushchev. Since 1985, he headed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Andrei Gromyko ended his political career in 1988, resigning at his own request. For 28 years, from 1957 to 1985, Andrei Andreevich Gromyko headed the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This record has not been broken so far. With his direct participation, many agreements on the control of the arms race were prepared and implemented. So, in 1946, he came up with a proposal to ban the military use of atomic energy. In 1962, his tough stance on the inadmissibility of war contributed to the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. At the same time, according to the memoirs of the Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer Alexander Feklistov, the head of the USSR Foreign Ministry was not privy to Nikita Khrushchev's plans to deploy Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
The special pride of the Soviet diplomat was the signing in 1963 of the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water. "(The treaty - ed.) Showed that with the United States and Britain, the two pillars of NATO, we can solve an important problem. After the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco, this was the second most important signature under a historical document," Andrei later said. Gromyko.
Another achievement he considered the signing of the ABM, SALT-1, and later SALT-2 treaties with the United States, as well as the 1973 agreement on the prevention of nuclear war. According to him, from the documents of a negotiation nature, it was possible to fold a mountain as high as Mont Blanc.
With the direct participation of Andrei Gromyko, it was possible to prevent a large-scale war between India and Pakistan in 1966, to sign agreements between the USSR and the FRG, which were later joined by Poland and Czechoslovakia. These documents contributed to the relaxation of tension and the convening of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. With his participation, the 1973 Paris Agreement was signed to end the Vietnam War. In August 1975, the so-called Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki, which secured the inviolability of post-war borders in Europe, and also spelled out a code of conduct for the countries of Europe, the United States and Canada in all spheres of relations. In our time, the implementation of these agreements is monitored by the OSCE. With the direct participation of Andrei Gromyko, a multilateral conference was convened in Geneva, within the framework of which the opposing sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict met for the first time.
It was Andrei Gromyko who in 1985 nominated Mikhail Gorbachev for the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. But after 1988, having already resigned all powers and watching the events in the USSR, Gromyko regretted his choice. In one of his interviews, he said: "The sovereign's cap was not according to Senka, not according to Senka!"
Personal life
The future "patriarch of diplomacy" met his wife Lydia Grinevich in 1931, when he entered the Minsk Economic Institute. Lydia, like him, was a student at this university.
The personal life of Andrei Gromyko and Lydia Grinevich was happy. It was a truly exemplary cell of Soviet society, where complete mutual understanding reigned. When her husband was sent to the village school as the principal, his wife followed him. A year later, their son Anatoly was born. And in 1937, a daughter, Emilia, appeared. The wife not only provided a reliable "rear" for the spouse, but also corresponded to him. She learned English and often hosted receptions to which the wives of Western diplomats were invited. The role of Lydia Dmitrievna in the fate of her husband can hardly be overestimated. Perhaps, without her participation, Andrei Andreevich would not have made it that far. A strong-willed woman everywhere followed her husband and remained an indisputable authority for him, to whose advice the politician listened. The spouses had their grandchildren - Alexei and Igor. Andrey Andreyevich's favorite hobby was hunting. He also collected guns.
Andrei Gromyko died in July 1989. Death came from complications after rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. And although the emergency prosthetics operation was carried out on time, the body and the worn-out heart could not bear the stress. They wanted to bury the "Patriarch of diplomacy" at the Kremlin wall, but he himself bequeathed to be buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
