A quarter of a century in Washington

On April 6, at the age of 91, the outstanding Russian diplomat Anatoly Dobrynin died. In his condolences to family and friends, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that he was a talented and bright person, a supreme professional, “a legend of Russian diplomacy.” “It is impossible to overestimate the personal contribution of Anatoly Fedorovich to the resolution of the Caribbean crisis and the normalization of Soviet-American relations,” the presidential telegram said. “His brilliant skills as a negotiator and analyst were appreciated by his colleagues and opponents.” The Russian Foreign Ministry’s condolences emphasize that “in all responsible positions, he made an enormous personal contribution to the solution of the most complex international problems and the implementation of our country’s foreign policy.”

Anatoly Dobrynin was Ambassador to the United States under Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush knew him well. They all paid due respect to the diplomat, who served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Washington for 25 years.

Anatoly Dobrynin was born in 1919 in the village of Krasnaya Gorka near Moscow. After school, he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, and after graduation he worked at an aircraft factory. The young engineer was offered to go to study at the Higher Diplomatic School, and upon graduation, his diplomatic career began. In 1957, he was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the UN, and two years later he headed the North America Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In January 1962, Dobrynin was sent as ambassador to Washington. Already in October, he had the opportunity to play an important role in negotiations to resolve the Cuban missile crisis, when the world was on the verge of world war.

The diplomat has great merit in the matter of arms reduction; in 1969, it was he who was tasked with discussing the start of negotiations on disarmament issues with President Nixon. Subsequently, Anatoly Dobrynin worked hard to prepare the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM) and the strategic arms limitation treaties SALT 1 (1972) and SALT 2 (1979).

His publications about those events are rightfully considered fundamental in the study of negotiation processes on the most complex international problems. And the book “Purely Confidential” has become an indispensable guide for those studying the “Dobrynin school of diplomacy.”

Anatoly Dobrynin left Washington in 1986 to take the position of Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow. Until 1988, he headed the international department of the CPSU Central Committee, and in 1990 he became an adviser to USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. After the collapse of the USSR in 1992, the diplomat returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a consultant advisor.

Boris KAIMAKOV