Anatoly Dobrynin

Anatoly Dobrynin began as an aircraft engineer. After graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1942, he worked at the Yakovlev experimental aircraft plant before entering diplomatic training in 1944. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation, later served as a United Nations under-secretary-general, and directed the ministry’s North American department. Appointed ambassador in 1962, he remained in Washington until 1986, dealing with six American presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. ^{1, 2}

The Cuban missile crisis tested his access to the White House within months of his arrival. In a private meeting on 27 October 1962, Robert Kennedy described the danger of military escalation and conveyed the president’s proposed settlement: Soviet missiles would leave Cuba in exchange for an end to the quarantine and assurances against invasion. Dobrynin specifically asked about American missiles in Turkey. Kennedy replied that their removal could follow within several months, provided the arrangement remained confidential. Dobrynin’s report carried this crucial assurance to Moscow. ³

Under Richard Nixon, Dobrynin became Henry Kissinger’s principal Soviet interlocutor in a confidential channel linking the White House and the Kremlin. Their June 1969 conversation ranged across Vietnam, strategic arms, the Middle East, and a possible summit. Dobrynin questioned American efforts to link progress on different disputes, explored what Nixon might offer if the Vietnam war ended, and asked whether Kissinger would consider a quiet visit to Moscow. ⁴

Personal access did not remove the danger of miscalculation. After the October 1973 Middle East crisis, Dobrynin complained to White House chief of staff Alexander Haig that Moscow had learned of an American military alert through the radio despite frequent confidential contact with Kissinger. He also protested public language that presented the Soviet Union as a weaker partner. Haig sought to reassure him about Nixon’s intentions; Dobrynin warned that the episode damaged what the two governments had built. ⁵

Dobrynin returned to Moscow in 1986 to head the Communist Party’s International Department and later advised the Soviet leadership. In the early 1990s, he spent ten months as a guest scholar at the Wilson Center, working on the memoir published in 1995 as In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents. He died in 2010. ^{1, 2}