Andrei Gromyko

Andrei Gromyko entered diplomacy from economics. Born near Gomel in 1909, he studied agriculture and economics, earned a candidate degree in 1936, and worked at Moscow’s Institute of Economics. In 1939 he joined the Foreign Commissariat and was sent to Washington as embassy counselor. Four years later, he succeeded Maxim Litvinov as ambassador. ¹

At the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks talks, Gromyko helped negotiate the organization that would become the United Nations while defending Moscow’s demands over its structure. He proposed separate founding membership for all sixteen Soviet republics, provoking American and British objections. On Security Council voting, he insisted that a major power must retain its vote even when it was a party to a dispute. ^{2, 3}

His embassy also handled the human consequences of the war. In April 1945, he pressed the United States to transfer all liberated Soviet citizens to Soviet authorities for repatriation, including people found wearing German uniforms. He argued that Germany had coerced Soviet prisoners and deported civilians into its formations and invoked the agreement reached at Yalta. The demand was categorical; it did not distinguish between those who wished to return and those who did not. ⁴

Gromyko subsequently represented the Soviet Union at the United Nations, served as first deputy foreign minister, and spent a brief period as ambassador in London. As foreign minister from 1957 to 1985, he became a central participant in Soviet diplomacy across successive leaderships. His work included the 1963 negotiations for a limited nuclear test ban agreement and the high level Soviet-American exchanges of the détente years. ^{1, 5}

In 1985 he left the Foreign Ministry for the chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the country's formal position as head of state. He resigned from that office and the Politburo in 1988 and died in Moscow in 1989. ⁵