A. A. Gromyko is a politician with whose name the golden age of Soviet diplomacy is associated. Pet of Stalin and Brezhnev, not so revered by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Andrei Andreyevich really played a prominent role in the political arena of the 20th century. The biography of Gromyko, nicknamed in the West, "Mr. NO", is filled with fateful moments. It was thanks to his efforts that the Caribbean crisis did not develop into a nuclear war.
In February 1957, Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was appointed to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. He worked in this post for 28 years, this record has not been broken so far. Throughout his career, the minister allowed himself to have and express his own opinion, different from the opinion of the country's leadership. Foreign colleagues called Gromyko "Mr." No "for intransigence and unwillingness to give up their positions in the negotiations. To this the minister retorted that he had to hear" No "from foreign diplomats more often than they did his" No ".
Biography
The story of A. A. Gromyko should begin with his father. Andrei Matveevich was by nature a curious person and partly an adventurer. In his youth, at the height of Stolypin's reforms, he ventured to go to Canada to earn money. After his return, he was called to war with the Japanese. Having seen the world, learning to speak a little English, the father shared his experience with his son, told many amazing stories about military everyday life and battles, life and traditions of overseas peoples. Returning to his native village of Stary Gromyki in the Gomel region in Belarus, Andrei Matveevich married Olga Bakarevich.
Andrei 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 in the rafting, performed agricultural work. He studied a lot and enthusiastically. He graduated from the seven-year school, agricultural college and in 1931 became a student at the Minsk Institute of Economics. 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 thesis at the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR and was sent to Moscow at the Research Institute of Agriculture.
Thanks to the knowledge of foreign languages and the working and peasant origin, Andrei Gromyko was transferred to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Since then, the career of the future minister has rapidly gone uphill. Head of the Department of American Countries, NKID, Advisor to the Plenipotentiary Ambassador to the United States and Cuba. During the Great Patriotic War, he was engaged 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 postwar world order was decided, and a decision was made to create the United Nations Organization. It is his signature that stands under the UN Charter. Then he was the Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN, Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR, First Deputy Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
In 1957, Andrei Gromyko replaced Dmitry Shepilov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, who himself recommended Gromyko to N. S. Khrushchev. Since 1985, he headed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Andrei Gromyko ended his political career in 1988, at his own request having resigned. For 28 years, from 1957 to 1985, Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko headed the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This record has not been broken so far. With his direct participation, many agreements on arms race control were prepared and implemented. So, in 1946, he made a proposal to ban the military use of atomic energy. In 1962, his tough stance on the inadmissibility of war contributed to a peaceful resolution of the Caribbean crisis. At the same time, according to the recollections of the Soviet diplomat and intelligence officer Alexander Feklistov, the USSR Foreign Minister was not dedicated to Nikita Khrushchev’s plans to deploy Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
A special pride of the Soviet diplomat was the signing in 1963 of the Treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. "(The agreement - ed.) Showed that we can solve an important problem with the United States and Britain, the two pillars of NATO. After the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco, it was the second most important signature on a historical document, " Andrei later said. Gromyko.
Another achievement, he considered, was the signing with the USA of the ABM, SALT – 1, and later the SALT-2 treaties, as well as the agreement on the prevention of nuclear war, concluded in 1973. According to him, from documents of a negotiating nature it was possible to lay down a mountain the height of 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 the agreements of the USSR with the Federal Republic of Germany, which Poland and Czechoslovakia later joined. These documents helped defuse tensions and convene a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. With his participation, the 1973 Paris Agreement on ending the war in Vietnam was signed. In August 1975, the so-called Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki, which fixed the inviolability of the post-war borders in Europe, as well as a code of conduct for the countries of Europe, the USA and Canada in all areas of relations. Nowadays, the OSCE is monitoring the implementation of these agreements. With the direct participation of Andrei Gromyko, a multilateral conference was convened in Geneva, during which the warring parties of the Arab-Israeli conflict met for the first time.
It was Andrei Gromyko in 1985 who nominated Mikhail Gorbachev for the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. But after 1988, having already laid down all his powers and observing the events taking place in the USSR, Gromyko regretted his choice. In one of the interviews, he said: "Not on Senka was the cap of the sovereign, not on Senka!"
