0 Transcript of the Proceedings of 3 Competition Conference of and the 5 ho d Deterioration $315 568 of $55293 Relations Honda 23-26 Marc 7 I 97 I 980 7995 Edited by Svetiono Sovronskoyo Emory University and David H UJelch University of Toronto Sponsored by the Carter Brezhnev Project Center for Foreign Policy Development Thomas J Watson Jr Institute for International Studies Providence RI USA With support from Arca Foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York W Alton Jones Foundation John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Winston Foundation for World Peace DOBRYNIN I would like rather to expand a little bit more on what Karen asked before the conference Before we going into all of these details about the very colorful discussion between Cy and Gromyko and I think we should do it the basic question really was were we -l mean both of us the Soviet Union and the United States prepared to find accommodation to nd solutions to many of these conflicts or we were not prepared to do 50 Take the situation in Somalia and Ethiopia In August and January 1978 we said to the Americans Let s sit down together and find a way out of this conflict We were told in effect The Americans said that by joining us in such discussions they would be legitimizing our presence in Africa This was their answer to us It was nothing new It was the same situation in Kissinger's time which I know a little bit better than Carter's Kissinger was prepared to discuss the Middle East situation with us hundred times But once we came to the concrete discussions his purpose was very clear It was eSpecially clear in the war of 1973 he was against anything that would legitimize the Soviet presence in the Middle East This was his credo it was clear from the very beginning to the very end So the United States seemed unwilling to seek solutions with us out of fear that this would legitimize our presence and our role What we managed to do with Cy at the very beginning preventing Ethiopia from crossing the Ogaden border was a real achievement We were also working together on Yemen But these are the only two examples when we were really working together On all of the other issues we were on opposite sides It seemed to us maybe I am exaggerating a bit here but it seemed to us that you were always thinking that the Third World was yours after the Second World Wartree mmeeaw m L43 4 that it was the Western countries domain You felt that we had no business there You did not say so directly but that was the impression we had 50 when we tried to find an accommodation when we tried to work together you always told us bluntly or not so bluntly We really don t want to deal with you When we wanted to nd a collective way of preventing the conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia from escalating Zbig s reaction was very simple We don t want to legitimize the Soviet presence in the Horn of Africa Only when the United States got into a very difficult situation in some area of Third World would you come to us and say Look here let s do something otherwise there will be a conflict When the situation developed favorably from your perSpective you never asked us to do anything But when something went wrong you would say Let's do something I am not criticizing you here there are plenty of things about our own behavior to criticize of course I am merely stating my impression of your attitude My personal Opinion is that the Soviet-American relationship suffered greatly over the long run because of the Third World The game was really not But we should address this particular issue when we discuss the question you just put on agenda Mr Chairman It would be very interesting at least for us Russian participants to know how really you approached it Did you really wanrto be more cooperative to work together I could give another example it is unfortunate that Zbig is not here i can give you an interesting piece of information During the Afghanistan conflict you expressed an interest in guaranteeing together the safety of Pakistan and Iran but with one condition there would be no written agreement because you didn't want to legitimize our role in the 9 Middle East Again it was the same song Always So I am saying this not by way of criticism but simply by way of inviting American participants to clarify this issue at least for me How was it really at that time Was true cooperation really in the mind of leading American officials Thank you LEGVOLD Thank you Anatoly Marshall and then Oleg MARSHALL SHULMAN In answer to Anatoly s question it seems to me it is useful to have in mind three considerations The first was the time factor because from the 19605 into the 19805 the Soviets' logistical capability for reaching Africa and other Third World areas was growing For example at the time of the Congo crisis in 1960 the fight of Lumumba and Kasbubu and so on the Soviet Union had an interest but not the capability of reaching the Congo and intervening in an effective way By the 1970s and a fortiori in the lQBOs the Soviet Union had begun to acquire that capability This was a new factor The second consideration is how the United States would react to this There were some who were beginning to explore the possibility of cooperative action There were others who still held essentially the geopolitical view that we should not allowing a Soviet encroachment The relative weight of these two of thought shifted over time The third element goes back to Bob s original question about the conversation between President Carter and Foreign Minister Gromyko Essentially there were 53 Km WM power and some believed beyond that it was a struggle against the Soviet goal of destroying American influence around the world and undermining the United States It is very hard to discuss these things given our personal relations and given the evolution of the relations between our two countries without going back and understanding how strongly held those views were And I think what we are asking from you at this point is precisely what you introduced a sense of what your strategy wasp what you really thought you were trying to accomplish in getting involved however you were involved in Shaba 7 or Horn of Africa 3 etc What were you doing DOBRYNIN May I speak to that LEGVOLD If it s very brief Anatoly because i think we will be back and forth on this all morning DOBRYNIN Before I answer you I have one very brief additional question which i would like to throw to everyone for discussion Don't you aall of you think that during the Carter administration all of these African things were blown out of all proportion I feel personally that they were I am not saying who was guilty you or we We were playing our own games But I think to a certain extent really the Situation in Africa was blown out of proportion in Soviet American relations and in world affairs generally Now coming back to your question Quite frankly as far as know Oleg or 15 Karen may correct me we did not have any African doctrine at that time There was no doctrine in the Soviet Union We had no plans i do not recall any discussion about how to behave in Africa on a real big scale The policy was like a mosaic it developed in bits and pieces Something would happen here so we went there because you were there or vice versa It was never the case that we were somewhere that you were not There was always that kind of interaction I do not say that it was clever game but nevertheless it was a game We did not have a well-thought-out policy in Africa We did not have an African doctrine at all What we had were just ideological rules of thumb We were going to support colonial people people who were under colonialism The only over-arching policy was this ideological rule of thumb Karen knows it quite well better than i do These were the major considerations But I never heard strategic considerations Many times I sat in on Politburo meetings where strategic matters were discussed and I never heard anyone say anything about the strategic importance of Africa for the Soviet Union You may believe it or not but there was unanimity i never heard from Gromyko or from Andropov anything about the strategic importance of Africa for the Soviet Union I never heard anything about the importance of Africa as a place for us to cut off your oil supplies that was a favorite theme of yours So coming back to my point unfortunately as far as our side is concerned it was not a very well-thought policy We did not have any doctrine except an ideological doctrine We were certainly not trying to build an empire in Africa We had no guiding conception of our policy in Africa We had a guiding conception of our policy in Europe 16 3 j v-tr E's-1333 E733 we 5 23m taut-J 1 1 or wrongly we had one in the disarmament negotiations the SALT talks and so on But in Africa we did not Before coming to this conference I looked at the agenda and I saw the phrases Shaba and Shaba I did not know what these meant I was an ambassador for 25 years and I did not know what we were talking about I thought maybe I had missed something when was ill or in the hospital Laughten Really I did not know I had to go to the Foreign Ministry and look at all of my telegrams to try to find out what these meant I did not find a single telegram referring to these things There was not a single telegram from the Washington Embassy to Moscow about any Shaba incident There was no record of anybody in your country referring to Shaba or Shaba ll There were telegrams about Zbig s trip to China and about many other things But there was nothing on Shaba or Shaba ll And here is it on the agenda of our meeting At the last conference I protested all the attention we were paying to the Horn of Africa My view was that it was unimportant or wrongly nobody in Moscow or in the Washington embassy paid much attention to it Maybe people in Karen s department did Maybe they talked about Shaba in the International Department But it was not a significant political issue for us i don't believe there was really a competition for Africa But there was clearly a growing misunderstanding The Carter administration was most unfortunate it began with a great hope for improved LJ S -Soviet relations and nished with you know a fiasco That's all LEGVOLD We've obviously got some very intelligent scholars around the table because 17 DOBRYNIN I will try to answer your question At that particular moment the Soviet government was quite prepared together with the United States to have a joint effort to stop the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia There was no disagreement among the military people or the ideologists Ponomarev said this you can find it in your own papers We were really interested in st0pping the fighting We were quite prepared to work together in Ethiopia and Somalia If you look at the materials that you have here you can see that in five or six meetings of Politburo the one question that they discussed for over six months was how to stop the fighting They were very seriously thinking about how to do it At the very beginning we said that we did not like the fighting because after all they were allies and it would have been better to keep them together Nikolai Podgorny visited then there Castro There were many efforts to try to keep Barre and Mengistu together We had some concern about Barre but we were talking amongst ourselves about how to stop this So in this particular case the prospects for a cooperative solution were quite good We definitely wanted to st0p the fighting and this could have been achieved if there had been an effort on your side This may not have been true of all situations in the world but on this particular issue Somalia-Ethiopia there was a very good possibility that we could both would work together We were quite prepared to deal with you Why did we fail It was a matter of perception what you were thinking about us and what we were thinking about you Maybe Cy or somebody else would like to comment on the state of mind of your president we could discuss our top officials as well From the very beginning after Carter was elected but before he 44 an 13 1253 EEG at 1ass m 71 m El I a officially became president we had the feeling that he worried that the Soviet Union would test his will his strength and his convictions We thought he worried that we would try to find out whether he could be pushed around and that we would try to show him that we really were a force worldwide We got this impression from many sources intelligence sources people in the Embassy even people in the White House and people who were very close to the president I could give their names but i don t want to This was the situation There was a meeting of the Politburo and Brezhnev said Look here's someone who comes from a different background The president is a little bit concerned or a little bit uneasy that we are going to test his will Then Harriman came He was a self-appointed ambassador as I understand because nobody sent him But he went to Moscow before the president was officially inaugurated And he too expressed this worry So Brezhnev himself told him Please tell Mr Carter that we are not going to test his will it sounds ridiculous now but Brezhnev explained to Harriman that he was not going to test the will of the president Let s go further When the situation in Africa developed in 1977 and 1978 i suspect that the president made up his mind that we were testing his resolve It seems to me that he was determined not to be pushed around in Africa He was torn between his desire for cooperation and his fear of confrontation He made many Speeches in which he was torn between cooperation and confrontation One was the speech in Annapolis He was speaking about cooperation then suddenly he faced us wtil t the question are you for cooperation or for confrontation This showed that the president became more combative 1 little by little Without saying who is right and who is wrong i would suggest that he 45 became more and more combative Cy is right when he went to Moscow in March he brought with him a lot of suggestions Aside from SALT our feeling was that it was possible to do certain kinds of things Someone mentioned the Indian Ocean I forget who mentioned it We were prepared to cooperate on the Indian Ocean But what happened with Indian Ocean You canceled the negotiations Until the very last moment we were eager to continue I realize that this happened in connection with Afghanistan but still you canceled it That was before Afghanistan DOBRYNIN Before that's right even before Afghanistan It is not a major point So we really were prepared to cooperate And we had the impression that you were too At the outset we had a good impression of the administration s willingness to cooperate When I spoke with the president personally or when he wrote letters he would appeal for joint action to avoid confrontation and to pursue a new era of cooperation But then little by little you know tension grew One reason for that I think was our mistake there was no summit meeting until 1979 I think it was the biggest mistake that we made in our government because we were just dragging our feet instead of sitting down and discussing all these issues frankly with Cy with the president and with Zbig Several times during I977 and 1978 I suggested to Moscow that we should sit down with the president and discuss these issues 415 are 2333 use CT@3756 WEE Unfortunately on our side it was Gromyko who prevailed He convinced Brezhnev to bring pressure on the Americans to sign a SALT treaty He felt thatglwe held off a summit the Americans would try as soon as possible to prepare a treaty and to sign it But ultimately we spent three years on the treaty and by that time Brezhnev was really in another world The whole relationship could have been completely different It was a mistake that we did not really try to explain ourselves to each other It was both sides fault but I think it was much more our fault The last remark I would like to make is in the connection with Georgy s comment He made an interesting remark There is only one thing I disagree with him about I do not think we reached the point in 1978 where we thought that we had reached a point of such military strength that for us the Third World was the most important area of concern I never heard anyone in my country suggest that the Third World was the number one problem for Russia Never TROYANOVSKY Never That is true DOBRYNIN So please don t be misled Maybe he spoke with Andr0pov he was not at that time the Secretary General but he was a reasonable fellow But the Third World was never the number one problem The number one problem was the United States I just wanted to make that clear 47 @3333 mmemm at U S -Soviet aspect of the Middle East question in Zbig s mind at least was settled LEGVOLD I am going to turn to Anatoly next but I am going to ask a question first Anatoly in terms of what you have said a moment ago and what has been the general position was there a view at high levels in the Soviet Union or among you professionals -that the October ist joint statement had been a kind of deception Did you feel that it was insincere on the part of the United States apart from the Secretary's role in it DOBRYNIN If you look back at the previous two decades of Soviet American relations you must understand that our impression was that practically all American presidents did not want us to participate in any Middle East conferences or settlement So it was a relief for us when in the very beginning of the Carter administration we discovered through Cy Vance that you were very actively beginning to explore the possibility of some joint effort to reach a settlement In this connection there were several meetings between you and Gromyko I can quote the decision of our Politburo from our archives they specifically instructed Gromyko at that time to do his best to come to an agreement with Cy Vance to find common ground for a Middle East settlement through joint or parallel actions This was our basic policy There were many meetings I think before the ist of October and there was an unusually good development in our relations on the Middle East The agreement on the 151 of October was received in Moscow I should say with true satisfaction because it was very unusual to have an agreement on the Middle East We thought it was a good achievement with the new administration Then Sadat's visit happened Within the government there was a division of opinion A majority I would say looked back on the long history of Soviet-American relations when the Soviet Union was excluded They thought that this was not a deception exactly but rather that the administration retreating under the pressure from Israel and pro-Israeli forces in Washington For us it was a rather bad sign If you retreat on this one what should we expect on the SALT talks What should we expect on other things LEGVOLD Anatoly what was the minority view DOBRYNIN Well a minority were uncertain about what kind of game it was A maiority thought that you were yielding under the pressure from Israel and from the lobbyists in Congress After several weeks after three or four weeks the administration continued to tell us very frankly and we accepted it that they were in favor of this October 1 statement But then you know what happened Our intelligence sources gave us the impression that President Carter appealed to Sadat to break the deadlock and then Sadat came with his initiative This is the version of events we had in our minds LEGVOLD So you thought that Sadat s visit was instigated by the Americans 102 7 J ates FE 531 5 523533 EMT me 93m up JLJ DOBRYNIN In a way Not 100% no because I remember when Cy mentioned to me about if you permit me to tell the story- VANCE Yes yes DOBRYNIN He told me how he spoke with Sadat before the statement that they had friendly talks Cy painted a very interesting picture He said he spoke with Sadat and Sadat told him Look here the people of Egypt are so tired we can no longer live in a state of war with Israel I have no choice but to find a way out of this impasse Do you remember Vance nods This was off the record 50 I will not say that it was instigated by the United States but perhaps the United States gave him a small push to help him make a final decision Maybe Cy would say that there was not even a small push I accept that if that is what he says But this of course is one of the maior things which make a very bad impression in the Kremlin for one I do not know about my colleagues I have not tried to speak with them on this- but I always thought that the idea of us not having any relations with Israel and at the same time pretending to be a peacemaker or a co-chairman of something was nonsense It was nonsense How could you negotiate or be in a position to do anything if you do not want to discuss matters with Israel Once when Gromyko and Suslov were on vacation we tried to persuade Brezhnev to have consular relations with Israel or at least some informal representation He gave an order to the Foreign Ministry to work on 103 this problem But then Gromyko came back and Suslov came back and they said Now come on until there is movement on the side of Israel there should be no movement from our side This put us in an all-or-nothing situation We could not expect under this difficult situation to arrive at a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East problem I am not an admirer of Henry Kissinger's Middle East policy but to a certain extent his step-by- step approach was the right one In any case the course of events as it developed at that time had negative effects on our relationship We really believed that you broke your promise that you iust went your own way without us This is my reply to what you said LEGVOLD Cy i am going to turn to you but I want to clarify one thing in particular if i may VANCE Yes go ahead LEGVOLD I heard you say initially that after you heard of the Sadat surprised you you attempted to put the two together that is the Geneva initiative and Sadat's initratixe but that at some pornt you could not do it any longer If that is correct was that in fact the decision of the administration or was that your own initiative VANCE It was a decision by the administration The president knew about it fully and 104 ii t F31 m1 sound fellow but in this case he got carried away I do not agree with his statement LEGVOLD On the broader point though there are two things Mark quoted from Dr Brzezinski's memoir which suggests that by November he had decided that this was an opportunity to squeeze the Soviets out Was that the reason that there was such opposition to the Sadat initiative and opposition to American policy Did you believe that what Zbig is now saying was his view that it was in fact the motivation of the US government at that point DOBRYNIN I will be rather blunt We were under the impression that it was Cy s view- and the view of the State Department to reach a certain kind of understanding to find a way out for the Middle East We knew-n-or at least we thought we knew that there were some people opposing this view saying that the Soviet Union should be squeezed out of the Middle East process That we knew we had a great deal of information on this Not only from you but from Yitzhak Rabin and others Our experience with previous administrations showed this very clearly So we were not very much surprised that suddenly something happened There was a wild reaction in the United States and Israel and then there was a change in the balance of forces within your government You know this better than I do perhaps one of the other American participants could explain it to us But in our view there was a very delicate balance Until October 1 the forces favoring cooperation were stronger after this reaction which was in my view rather unexpected 52 mm t 525 3 715 4 WEE even to Cy maybe i am wrongsay but after this big reaction in Israel and all the negative press all those kinds of things the government begin to withdraw little by little and then more and more and more Within a week or two the president withdrew two or three sentences from this communiqu in oral conversation with the Israelis Some of these were very important thingsr for example touching on the Palestinian issue He said to Dayan Okay this particular sentence does not apply to you He made some concessions to them The government began to retreat under the pressure It was not that you wanted to deceive us there was obviously good will present We definitely counted on the good will of the president and of Cy But we felt that your government was retreating under the pressure 50 you retreated more and more and more And then there was the Sadat trip many angry statements from both sides and other issues that began to cascade going to China only two months before the Shcharansky case and other things But as far as the Middle East itself is concerned all of a sudden the joint process stopped Through inertia Cy and Gromyko continued to discuss a conference But you know what happened afterwards LEGVOLD Bob Cy and then I am coming back to Karen Brutents VANCE In the aftermath of the joint statement and the hubbub that followed that for a bli of time the president wrote a letter to Sadat which is in the briefing book Let me read 10 LEGVOLD A question to our Russian guests in fact two questions In your recollection how early did you begin to think that the Carter administration was playing a China card against you Did it happen before Brzezinski's trip to Or was that the critical moment where you began to think that the administration was trying to use the China factor against you Second once you began to focus on the American handling of the China issue how serious was it for you Was it simply an inconvenience An annoyance Or was it something that was seen as very serious even strategically significant I have a third question at those fall meetings in 1978 on SALT some have argued the Soviet Union for the first time established a linkage they linked SALT momentarily to the normalization of relations with China although they backed off in a few months i do not know whether there is truth to that or not Does anyone want to comment on any of those questions Anatoly DOBRYNIN On the last one I do not recall any connections in our mind between SALT and the China issue as far as concluding the treaty was concerned There were discussions negotiations and we did not try to link these two issues You may have linked them but we did not So the answer is no A5 to how it influenced our relationship I nay put it this way during November and December 1978 when there were very extensive up-tempo negotiations between Cy and Gromyko to finish the SALT treaty everybody was expecting that this was number one 130 mu-Ii Hi - tii 'n grji Elam ma if Jan-W Far-s Il priority for your administration as it was for ours We had an expectation that we would finish the treaty soon Of course we know that you had negotiations with the Chinese This was not a secret But in our mind we still believed that SALT would be the number one issue for you not the Chinese Cy iust described how it happened really It was on the 15th of December ifl remember Zbig invited me because you were at that time in Europe or somewhere else and with great satisfaction he announced your normalization of relations with China He recalled that I became gray when I heard that I do not know why I should become gray at this announcement but he said Look here now there is an agreement to normalize relations with China and the Chinese Premier will come and on he went Cy tried to reverse this sequences of priorities as I understood it But suddenly as if something very urgent happened China became your priority not the SALT treaty The Politburo discussed this and they were rather angry with this situation When Cy returned for what were supposed to be the final discussions of SALT he received additional instructions on SALT to take a stronger position on the issue Everything was already prepared you were coming iust to finish things off and then suddenly after this love affair with the Chinese he received instructions to take a very tough position on So Gromyko was really angry It was his expectation that we were going to sign within a few days and that there would be a summit meeting in the spring But then you raised another obstacle to the discussions Cy you called Washington and I understood it you were told to hold firm You called from our mission As Zbig later explained-ml do not know whether he was joking or 131 not he was there with Brown i guess and somebody else because the president was in Atlanta He had a hemorrhoid attack so they did not want to bother him And these three fellows decided to follow this tough line on Gromyko became very angry he in turn decided to be tough too and for half a year the treaty was delayed after it was practically ready So the effect was We were not at that particular moment influenced by the implications of your having normal relations with China but at this particular moment we were angry that you preferred China to Moscow It was very clear There were other implications of course We were following your relations with China very closely Cy will remember that several times we discussed arms delivery While you continued your normalization of relations we began to receive information that you arrived at some secret intelligence agreement with China to monitor our missiles Then we received news that there was a discussion to sell China non-lethal military equipment and then later some other military equipment You were always consulting China Zbig discussed our SALT talks with the Chinese ambassador and discussed its Implications how America was going to get more out of the SALT talks than we would get and it would benefit China and so on All this information of c0urse made the geopolitical factor more and more important We received information that the Chinese were really boasting to some of their friends in the Third World that they were going to encircle Russia now with China the United States Japan and I do not know who else There would be an arc of crisis to invoke Zbig s invention They were going to encircle us They said many of these grandiose things But putting aside theses grandiose things of 132 tit- I M 1 8 E3 $33 am course China was China it was important it was a big factor We had major concerns We had less fear than irritation DOBRYNIN Yes at that moment it was more irritation than real fear But still of course China is China 50 this really created a situation which spoiled our negotiations in 1978 We went through with this meeting in Vienna which was a good thing but still there were many other issues and we regretted that this particular incident happened and that everything got postponed China at that time issue played a very bad role in our relationship LEGVOLD The next person on the list is Georgy and then Oleg But in case it did not get on the record Karen's side comment I think is important He said normalization with China was more of an irritant than a source of real fear Anatoly then repeated it Georgy SHAKIINAZAROV I would like to add to what Anatoly Fedorovich has just said We need to take into account the situation that developed at that time After Mao Zedong died some of the causes of the sharp confrontation between the Soviet Union and China were gradually weakening or disappearing In particular one can say that the competition fer the leading role in the world communist movement had relaxed The Chinese no longer demanded so strongly that Mao be recognized as the number one communist And we 133 lva- i never done that before This is what I wanted to add LEG VOLD Anatoly DOBRYNIN First I would like to answer my friend Oleg Phil asked you and i will try to answer him on your behalf laughterl what Zbig did in Beijing What he was up to and with what result 1 think the answer is very clear There is a White House document signed by Carter on May 17 instructing Zbig Brzezinski on what to tell Chinese Your basic goal should be convey to the Chinese our determination to compete effectively with the Soviets to deter the Soviet military challenge and to protect our interests and those of our friends and allies Equally important you should probe the Chinese for their views seeking to establish a shared perspective and where desirable to develop political collaboration You should emphasize reciprocity and stress that the pursuit of our shared objectives required mutual efforts Further With the above as your point of departure you should then share with the Chinese my personal view of the nature of Soviet threat To state it most my concern is the combination of increasing Soviet military power and political shortsightedness fed by big power ambitions might tempt the Soviet Union both to exploit local turbulence especially in the Third World and to intimidate our friends in order to seek political advantage and eventually even political preponderance This IS why i do take seriously Soviet action in Africa and this is why I am concerned about the Soviet military buildup in Europe i also see some Soviet designs HS pointed toward the Indian Ocean through South Asia and perhaps toward the encirclement of China You can well imagine given these instruction what kind of picture Zbig presented to the Chinese Alnd perhaps toward the encirclement of China through Vietnam and even perhaps some day through Taiwan The United States however is determined to respond It is rather clear what instructions Zbig had and he used them fully TROYANOVSKY He probably he wrote them for himself Laughter DOBRYNIN Yes he may have prepared it for himself but never signed them Laughter And there is another interesting point as was mentioned in the letter from Brezhnev immediately after the visit of Deng Xiaoping to Washington there was the invasion of Kampuchea Was this a coincidence or not LEGVOLD You mean the invasion of Vietnam DOBRYNIN Vietnam excuse me We wondered whether this was a simple coincidence or whether this was something you had discussed According to Henry Kissinger Deng mentioned in Washington that he was going to teach the Vietnamese a lesson Now about linkage and my letter I46 iul ut 5' 33353' In ill-ul- - 1 41 5 Eff-i ii E3 see 5 more GARRISON Earlier you had said that the Soviet Union did not attempt to hold up the SALT process because of what we were doing on China but DOBRYNIN Well I will repeat it We did not want to link these two issues because SALT was our number one priority and if there was a possibility to have the SALT agreement we would sign it immediately More than that if Cy had not received additional instructions from the White House we would have signed a treaty and announced it Gromyko had instruction from my government to make an announcement in Geneva by the end of the year even though you had already announced that you were going to receive Deng Xiaoping He was prepared a week later to sign SALT We did not like what you were doing with China but we were prepared to sign We discussed with Cy his new instructions and he tried to find a compromise This is why he called Washington There was a discussion about how to formulate this new demand on He tried to find a compromise Gromyko tried also But when Cy asked his government the answer was no And we were stuck for another six months if it were not for that there would have been an agreement then I know because these were Gromyko s instructions What could we gain by postponing Brezhnev was prepared to come in the spring or even earlier Everything was prepared LEGVOLD Thank you very much Anatoly Arne is next with a question We are beyond the hour that I promised you sol think we want to become brief now and then we will 14 night he was going to leave the next morning I said to him What the devil are you doing He said It is all over I said No it's not these issues have not all been resolved So you were the obstacle then Laughter GELB No no To say that China was what held it up does not make sense on the face of it Marshall because was our decision not the Soviets' decision They would have been willing to settle on what had been prearranged I agree with Anatoly China was not the reason for the failure And then disagree with everybody Laughter Even if we had solved all five of those issues in Geneva in December we had a list of almost 60 additional issues which we spent the next six months trying to clear up And in fact even when we got on the plane to fly out to Vienna we did not have a final text because there were still two issues unresolved DOBRYNIN You know as well as do that once you have a basic decision announced in Washington and Moscow by two leaders they will do whatever is necessary to clear up all remaining issues But when they are angry they might just wait another five or six months 152 em 33% - r-I Lieu Liv-41 WW ODOM Can I add something LEGVOLD Very briefly Bill And then I will give you more lime afterwards 000M Did we have at the last session a copy of the article from Presidenrra Studies Quarter y about the Annapolis speech LEGVOLD Yes ODOM i think that is terribly important because it is a part of the very phenomenon Les is describing You see what the president did in putting that speech together that has often been cited as evidence of the Vance-Brzezinski split The split was very clearly in the president's head on that GELB Absolutely LEGVOLD Now before you Mark Anatoly Dobrynin DOBRYNIN I would just like to make a few comments on Les s statement think what you said Les was very interesting and from my point of view as Ambassador it looked to me exactly the way you presented it not in detail of course because I did not know 169 them But i would like for you to understand what actually happened in the Kremlin at the very beginning of the Carter administration because it is very illuminating for all further events At the very beginning Carter was a completely unknown figure to the Moscow leadership and for me as Ambassador too When they asked me for an analysis of Carter all I could do was give quotations from his speeches during the election campaign which are misleading When I met first time Carter two or three months after he became president I discussed SALT with him because i already had some information that he had in mind drastic reductions maybe up to 200 or 300 missiles When we discussed this with him i asked him Mr President I heard that you have a plan for really drastic reductions He said Yes i asked How much He said Three hundred two hundred Well said There is no practical way to do it in my personal opinion because with great difficulty we iust successfully finished the Vladivostok agreement It is better to finish what we have and then go to these drastic reductions later But he said l think it is not enough we should go further 50 the first thing i sent to Moscow was the news that the Washington rumors of a plan to make drastic cuts were true I heard it from the president He did not make a proposal to me officially but he confirmed the rumor which was going around Washington Then of course there were many cases of human rights which were considered in Moscow not as individual cases Ginzburg Orlov Shcharansky but rather as a trend in American foreign policy or wrongly they believed that this was a new trend in American policy for the first time the United States proposed to interfere openly in the 170 ii in mm react if was We -I l Irv-wr- rat-ax time - m- Lin-m 1 1 I'm sass Irv-'1 n i L domestic affairs of the Soviet Union Never before had there been such intervention on a government level This was a second big surprise and it caused great resentment in Moscow So what happened in my many years of being Ambassador I had never known our Politburo to have a specific discussion in the initial weeks of a new administration on how to deal with it But there was in this case Usually we would wait two three or four months to see what happened and what kinds of actions the new administration would take and we would formulate our own position But not in this case Before you came to Moscow Andropov and Ustinov wrote a very rough letter to the Politburo asking Brezhnev to put on the agenda as a special point our relationship with the new administration it was very unusual in their opinion this administration came with a very drastic and unwise policy l am using a mild word they used much stronger words such as a subversive policy to change everything in Soviet-American relations The new administration proposed just to sweep away the gains we had made during the previous administration and to begin with a completely clean slate This was not acceptable to us From the very beginning the Politburo proposed to take a very firm position with the new president to make him understand that this was not the way to treat the Soviet Union Again repeat never before had we had such a discussion about a new administration There was a discussion and it was decided to send a letter from Brezhnev to Carter explaining to Carter in a more polite way than was said at the Politburo meeting Look here let us be more reasonable First on SALT this is a major issue which is practically ready for signingnew avenue now We are prepared to look into it 171 further but let us not do away with four or five years ofdif cult negotiations and begin toying with a new set of proposals which will take another five or seven years to negotiate This was simply pragmatic We already had a treaty in place in addition at Vladivostok there was for the first time a real clash between Brezhnev and our military leadership Grechko our Minister of Defense protested some concessions Brezhnev made He said You are conceding too much to Americans l as a Minister disagree with you Mr Secretary General I was present at the three talks by telephone Ultimately Brezhnev you know was a rather cautious fellow He always tried to rule by consensus within the Politburo But here he was confronted with this situation when our Minister of Defense rather arrogantly said to him l am against and many people in the Politburo agree with me Brezhnev replied think the deal we are making with the Americans in Vladivostok is a good one Ifl will listen what you say we will destroy this treaty and for how many years will we have no treaty at all So Grechko after consulting called him back and said No no Leonid do not take it as an affront If you feel this way go ahead But for Brezhnev it was very difficult situation because for the first time he was challenged openly And then exactly within few months we had a new set of ideas from the United States a new president with a completely new set of rules for the SALT talks Brezhnev s reaction was very severe Oh my God he said So i have to begin from the very beginning in any case the new proposals were things in which Brezhnev himself was not convinced it was very dif cult to accept the idea of a reduction from several thousand missiles to two or three hundred missiles You have to understand it For NZ 1' u uni-4' mime-3 m Law @5633 rice-n Lnu Jl an sea sea my cars Sat-r i - Es so many years we were discussing in terms of thousands and then suddenly we were supposed to start talking about hundreds It was very difficult to accept So the impression this gave the Politburo was that President Carter was not serious that this was just plain propaganda to impress world opinion with the new president s new ideas Either that or he Carter did not know what he was talking about On the whole this was a issue Our reaction to your delegation was strongly negative because of the effect of your new proposals spoke with Cy Vance you probably see me in the State Department minutes I told him very clearly two weeks before he went to Moscow Cy what you are bringing as I understand it is a complete non-starter There is no way I do not know whether he thought that at that moment i was just trying to press him but that was not the case i really knew what the situation was I tried to give him a warning i tried to persuade him to have a second position But he did not listen When your delegation arrived in Moscow the response was brutal on our part because Brezhnev did not even want to listen He was beside himself Before you arrived there was another meeting of the politburo All those who were sitting around the table said Leonid show the Americans how we are strong and they are not serious 50 he did not want to discuss your proposals Of course you had the full right to expect some questions about your proposals and my impression was that you were prepared to explain them GELB Absolutely 73 DOBRYNIN But we were not prepared to discuss them seriously LEGVOLD Anatoly I am going to push you now to finish the point because we need to move on DOBRYNIN The point is very simple SALT could have been terminated very quickly in time for a summit at the beginning of 1977 Events would have been quite different in Soviet American relations if we had concluded with Vladivostok or something like it at a summit meeting in 1977 But instead we got stuck on Africa and in the irritant of human rights If you look at 1978 the main problem between us was African affairs and human rights At one meeting with Gromyko Carter asked him about Shcharansky He said What about Shcharansky What are you doing with his case Gromyko looked at him and said Who is Shcharansky In the United States everybody knew who Shcharansky was Gromyko just said Who is that Carter was so surprised that he dropped the whole issue Quite frankly at that time i thought What a clever Minister we have He avorded a long and delicate discussion just by saying i do not know who that is It was very simple jLaughterJ And Carter dropped it There was no more discussion just then about Shcharansky Well - this is how the things occurred From the beginning the was all wrong This was the important point the of the new administration's 174 El -Tl 2 El n-L approach to the Soviet Union was much more important than the new proposals the figures LEGVOLD Anatoly that is very helpful What you and Les have done for us i think is extremely valuable You have set the context for us But I am now going to urge us to focus on the 1978 period to understand how that worked given everything everyone has said Mark is next then Bob Pastor then Marshall then Anatoly Gribkov afterwards Mark GARRISON Just two brief points First i would like to illustrate one of the problems with the Carter administration that we talked about at Musgrove namely the question of priorities I looked again at Carter's memoirs for this period to see how he looked at all of these things And of course he looked at the issues that we are discussing separately in isolation more or less from each other But in his diary on March 13 he wrote It is hard to concentrate on anything except Panama And then of course he was dealing with two votes on the Panama treaty He really was not focused on what we are focussing on here But what I really wanted to do was to follow up on Bob's discussion of public opinion in the United States The question is to Anatoly The public opinion polls described a conservative swing in the United States at that time But in your letter to the Foreign Ministry and i realize your Embassy officers wrote the letter you only signed it came about I will let you speak first if you are disciplined if you consider the time limit Laughter DOBRYNIN Five minutes First of all I am really surprised that the Chairman is treating this paper as so important it had nothing really to do with big events But here he is inviting a full discussion of it I do not know even how you got this important document Laughter Zubok i would like to have a full explanation ZUBOK Legally Laughten DOBRYNIN I am sure you got it legally the question is why you got it The anti-Soviet conspiracy continues Anatoly DOBRYNIN This is my impression too Long loud laughter and applause I do not see any necessary to discuss it because it is not really First of all what it was It was you know customary Gromyko ordered all embassies once per quarter to write about what was going on in their host countries TROYANOVSKY Once every three months 196 $3 68 #3335 22531 211 53 In- 3'1- l I 3mm 13 hf-1' 1 rf_ 5 DOBRYNIN Once every three months For the active embassies Tokyo Paris Washington it was really an exercise in the futility because there were daily telegrams But once per quarter our counselors or a group of counselors would sit down and try to prepare a report 50 i did not pay much attention to it or to any others and i am sure the Foreign Ministry did not either lfyou want to know the point of view of embassy on a given subject i am prepared to give an answer But this is not a helpful document There is not a single document from the American side like this although I am sure that your embassy wrote something similar You do not discuss those suddenly we are to discuss this BRUTENTS You should be proud of it DOBRYNIN No no I am proud Laughter I am not proud that we are discussing my document It is not mine really but the embassy s SHULMAN Did you get a reaction to it DOBRYNIN Not at all Come on Gromyko did not read it TROYANOVSKY Why do you say Gromyko No one read it lLaughter 191i Only our department Only the department read it nobody else This is why i would like you to understand that it is not important It had no influence A telegram might have an influence on events but not this GELB If they did not pay attention to this kind of report what reports did you make to which they did pay attention DOBRYNIN Telegrams Cables They go to the members of the Politburo But not this paper This is a working paper for people in the American department LEGVOLD Anatoly in those terms then were the cables that you were sending back at about this time different in any significant way from the judgments in this paper DOBRYNIN They did not have this broad sweep they were very concrete They dealt specifically with SALT or with human rights with specific subjectHr they reported on what had happened that day what happened at my meeting with the secretary or the president and so on None of this was in the working papers all of this was in telegrams Sometimes when they asked I gave a general analysis in telegrams But you should not pay too much attention to this particular piece of paper The telegrams i am prepared to defend because I know that they were read by members of the Politburo Maybe Kornienko read this maybe not This is how it was 198 33931 is mu Ewe-1i r l fi rm I - em rm Second someone mentioned public opinion polls in this connection with this paper in your public opinion you could find many things But they are beside the point i had many conversations with your leading pe0ple who spoke about the SALT talks and about human rights and so on David Rockefeller or first name Austin many close friends of the president i spoke with dozens of them If you look at my telegrams you will see my reports of those conversations Many of them disagreed with the president on human rights as Oleg mentioned They think that he overplayed the issue Austin for instance He was with Coca-Cola DOBRYNIN Coca-Cola yes he was banker He said i talked to the president I told him that he was overplaying these things He was just spoiling U S -Soviet relations for nothing But my impression is that he is enjoying himself He is getting publicity as the champion of human rights On human rights David Rockefeller said do not agree with this with the way it is presented All of this leads me to ask a basic question to Marshall Did President Carter understand the damage he was inflicting on Soviet-American relations by his public human rights campaign Or did he believe that the Soviet Union will swallow it after all because it was much more interested in Did he think he could pursue both goals at once I tried to speak with him twice about this 199 Soviet who understands the United States better than anybody else When Arkady Shevchenko defected to the United States I naturally had a debriefing with him The one really important question I asked him was did he think the Politburo understood the United States i was concerned whether we were talking past each other or not And you know Shevchenko better than I You know whether he is reliable or not But he indicated that he did not think so he did not think the reporting coming from you and the reporting coming from elsewhere enabled them to do this We now have a good example here of your reporting even though you want to distance yourself from it We admire it My question to you is do you think the Politburo reading your other telegrams got the message that you have in here as to what the United States s motives were what the forces were that drove the United States Did you get this across to them in other ways if they did not read this LEGVOLD Anatoly please DOBRYNIN First a footnote about Shevchenko i know him well as does Oleg TROYANOVSKY More than well Laughter DOBRYNIN He has no knowledge about what went on in the Politburo None it was natural for to present himself as a man very close to the Politburo He said that any 202 hlu 'f 31 'i Em was fe E i t a I time he came to Moscow he would go to Brezhnev and say Hello Leonid and so on None of that was true TURNER All of your defectors were like that DOBRYNIN Yes it is understandable I agree with you He was close friend of Gromyko's son This made Gromyko available to him he could go to his house But you should know that Gromyko never discussed real politics in the presence of this fellow Even with his ambassadors he was rather reserved 50 all he heard he heard from Gromyko's son Anatoly This is the first remark that I wanted to make Of course when he came here he read the telegrams at United Nations Taovwnovsxv NotaH DOBRYNIN Not all It was up to the permanent representative to determine what he would see There was nothing in these telegrams about the opinion of the Politburo They contained only directives You should vote this way or that way without elaboration So he had no knowledge of the actual thinking in Moscow He had no access to the Politburo Whatever he said or thought came from his own imagination Nothing else do not know how much Anatoly Gromyko mentioned to him not because he was a reserved person but because he himself did not read telegrams Of course he may have 203 discussed some things with his father I do not know Now on the telegrams we sent The main concern was the atmosphere which existed between the two governments Take for instance May 1978 Of course I felt disappointed that we lost SALT and to a certain extent I was angry with the administration i will be very frank with you I am not trying to fault you here I am just reporting how I felt We felt that we were very close to signing the agreement in 1977 i took part in many of those discussion Marshall knows because i dealt with him for many years I spent dozens and dozens of evenings with him and Vance on it I felt attached to this agreement professionally i really wanted to have it And then suddenly it was derailed for various reasons Human rights was one Oleg explained it well The problem was how you handled the issue was definitely against the public pressure which you tried to mount against us Again I am no arguing with you about the merits of the case i am sure that everyone on the American side will defend it on its merits That is not what I am Speaking about here I am merely saying that there are other means for communicating your concerns Kissinger for example as you mentioned was not the best champion of human rights but even with him by the end of this Nixon administration we reached an agreement to allow people to emigrate mostly ofJewish nationality And we were prepared to permit more There was no limit to it But Jackson was pressing pressing and pressing Carter asked me if we could invite Jackson to Moscow i said l'll check it I sent a telegram to Brezhnev and the Politburo discussed it and I received a telegram back saying Yes if President Carter feels it would help his ideas about human rights we will invite Jackson to Moscow So i went to Jackson and I invited him to come to discuss 204 - rm 1 4 $1733 1 Iva 3 513 9 T-s T-l r mm 2 its Early F332 #11an everything What was his answer He said Okay i am very glad thank you very much But a few days later he said Okay I will come but I would like your Politburo to receive me and at the same time i will have a public meeting with all dissidents in Moscow Then i said to him Do you want to meet Brezhnev or the dissidents You have to make a choice i said You could have a meeting with the dissidents as Edward Kennedy had or you can meet Brezhnev But he wanted both This was impossible These are small things but they put matters in perspective These were unnecessary irritants They were frustrating On African affairs you probably noticed at the last meeting that I expressed irritation with your preoccupation with the Horn of Africa Quite frankly I felt the same way at the time it was a small tiny issue i understand now that you attached importance to it But i believed at the time and i still believe-that this was not the main issue in our relations It was maybe two or three levels below our main concerns disarmament European affairs and so on But you were always talking about Africa LEGVOLD Could you draw it to a close Anatoly DOBRYNIN Yes What is Somalia You go there you come back Who remembers Ethiopia These were really unimportant in our relations But at that time it was a big issue i felt inside that Africa should not be allowed to prevent the development of our relations i spoke with many people in your foreign policy establishment and many of 205 them also felt that the administration overplayed African affairs There was disagreement within your own administration in my telegrams i reported all of these talks which I had with prominent Americans I reported on these differences of opinion within the establishment I did not report on press coverage of public opinion polls I reported on the opinion of those whose opinion really mattered And there were great differences among those people So this was it LEGVOLD The next person is Bob Pastor then Les Gelb Then we are letting go of thisr and we are going to go onto the next session Bob Pastor PASTOR i would like to focus on one element of that letter which I think is very important it is on page 4 in which the Embassy is saying that we need to continue to react strongly and negatively to anti-Soviet rhetoric and actions but we also need to nd ways to respond to positive steps and to encourage and to reinforce positive steps And this is the question i would like to focus on for a moment Mr Shakhnazarov made a wonderful presentation just a little while ago in saying that the early expectation of the Soviet leadership about dealing with the Democratic administration was that the Democratic administration would be more progressive mmore open-mand that this might be a very important opportunity i think that was precisely the perspective that the Democratic administration brought to office here might be a chance to connect But we failed to do so and one of the reasons for that was that neither side 3306 l3 '5 n rm E3133 5533 we President Carter to other Western leaders things of that sort In the list of reasons that the Russian side has given us for why an intervention was not seriously contemplated there is no reference to the impact of any such intervention on the West and particularly on the United States Where on the scale of thinking did any possible strong U S or Western reaction fit in LEGVOLD Does anyone of the Soviet side care to answer that question DOBRYNIN it was one of the factors but it was not really decisive Of course we took it into consideration but relations with theiJnitedStates ere so bad at that time_th_at_ it was not decisive a factor Karen quoted some of the documents thinking about some things that the West might do not military things but other things So we took that into consideration But in a very limited way LEGVOLD Thank you Anatoly Tomorrow morning we will backpedal a little bit we will be looking at the period between the Vienna summit in the summer of 1979 and the events leading up to the Soviet I decision to intervene in Afghanistan If you wish we can also discuss the question of the Soviet brigade in Cuba and its effect on US policy I want to thank all of you for the session this afternoon i think it was very interesting i want to thank General Gribkov and Georgy Shakhnazarov particularly for their additional new information and i would like 270 33 22 also Owl-253 Moses DOBRYNIN I think Newsome was wrong Of course it was a very sour moment in our relationship but it did not have much influence on our decision about Afghanistan quite frankly There was a difference of opinion in Moscow about the significance of the Cuban brigade issue Some people just thought that Senator Church simply wanted to be reelected and that he created the issue for that purpose Others thought it was a convenient tool for the opponents of SALT to prevent ratification Still others thought it was one of the American attempts to adjust the 1962 understanding Throughout the hole history of Soviet-American relations since i962 there were several attempts by the American side to correct it to try to prevent us from sending patrol boats establishing a submarine base sending nuclear rather than non-nuclear submarines to Cuban ports deploying fighters and so on There was a whole series of these attempts beginning in 1962 So many of our people considered this another attempt to redraft in a ay this understanding in order to get rid of all our personnel which had been there for 1 7 years At that very moment I was in Moscow Cy sent a personal telegram to Gromyko asking him to send me back to Washington I was on vacation so Cromyko called me and said Well i do not know why they need to consult you i know you are on a vacation But if the Secretary asks then if you do not mind please go The first question Cy asked me when i met him was Anatoly were those troops there during the Kennedy administration During the Johnson administration During the Nixon administration During the Ford administration I said Yes Exactly Then he said Then what is this all about And i said i should ask you what it is all ab0ut During four administrations 287 our personnel had been there Nothing new had been introduced during the Carter administration And he agreed with me He said This is my understanding too And in his memoir he simply summarized the whole episode as a lapse of memory in American intelligence That was his description not mine McGeorge Bundy had made a public statement during the Kennedy administration that there were some two or three thousand Russian troops there to train It was nothing new We did not understand why it became an issue all of a sudden in 1979 quite frankly In the government there were several hypotheses as I have just enumerated But it was not really a decisive factor in our decision making on Afghanistan Of course it added a sour note to our relations so to speak but it did not affect our decision on Afghanistan Thank you LEGVOLD General Gribkox and then Marshall GRIBKOV I do not understand why the question of our motorized brigade came up 17 years after it had been stationed there We had four motorized regiments there in 1962 We called them regiments but they were essentially brigades One of them we renamed a brigade and then under an agreement with the Cuban leadership we left it there It consisted of about 2 500-3 000 people at different points in time And the American side knew about that brigade because their intelligence land air and satellite constantly monitored Cuba The Americans were informed about that brigade But why the question arms ME am am FM East 5 rm was me speak So if your point is big- 000M Very briefly i just want to say that i think Stan Turner's explanation here is remarkably candid i think he is taking more of a blame than he deserves I think he was the sictim of some interagency game plan and that this thing could have been sorted out by the winter had people beyond his control been willing to cooperate LEGVOLD Marshall I know you wanted to pick up is here Stan stopped But I am going to hold you for a minute Anatoly was next on the list Anatoly the only thing I would say is that in the history of these two conferences your feeling about the Goddamn Horn has become well-known I do not think that I am betraying your confidence if i say that when Cy Vance knew we were going to talk about the issue of the Soy iet brigade his basic attitude was we screwed up what is there to talk abou This was really what I was prepared to say My impression mand our embassy s impre55ion -was that this was not the creation of the administration but that the administration simply handled a domestic political issue badly leading to a needless mini-crisis That was my impression By the way we tried to helP you as you licked your wounds we tried to help you by issuing that nal communique covering the i55ue 303 LEGVOLD But Anatoly did senior officials in Moscow come to understand what you came to understand DOBRYNIN They had my explanation whether they accepted it or not I do not know But that was my explanation LEGVOLD But did you have some sense of whether they accepted it or not DOBRYNIN Yes i think so because ultimately we accepted a compromise which was really trying to help President Carter find a way out of this He coordinated his statement with us through Cy I met with Cy six or seven times iust on that communique it was not our communique it was President Carter s statement to the American public We agreed with it and proxided some help but in an off-the-record kind of way in the middle of this crisis Senator Robert Byrd the Senate maiority leader whom i knew quite well inyited me to come to the Senate to have an official talk He said Please Anatoly you know things quite well Tell your story about this from 15362 So with all documents I presented the case and when i finished it he said Well I will have to check with our intelligence And then later on as Cy told me he went to the president and he said heard the story from the Soviet Ambassador I hate checked With our intelligence and i have come to the conclusion that you created the mess The administration created the mess And unless you finish it Senate ratification of the SALT 304 1 1- 1 tube-'1 WW treaty is dead in the ater This is in Cy s book LEGVOLD Thank you Anatoly Jim do you have a brief reference to the documents IIERSHBERG Yes directly on the point of whether the Soviet leadership and Brezhnev personally blamed Carter and the Carter administration for the Cuban brigade There are a couple of relevant passages in the documents passed around the table this moming in Brezhnet s response to Carter's hotline message of September ZS the response sent on September 27 and in Brezhnev s conversation with Erich Honecker in East Berlin on October 4 The phrase used in the hotline response is We are extremely surprised by the openly hostile campaign against the Soviet Union which has been launched in the USA with the actite participation of the administration for which the United States has absolutely no reason and no legal basis And then a week later in his meeting with Honecker Brezhnev says It is our impression that until recently those who supported the ratification of this treaty SALT II had the upper hand Now the situation has become more complicated The historical clamor in the United States in which the Carter administration directly participated over the stationing of the Soviet brigade in Cuba has become a serious impediment We as well as the Cubans have taken a firm position against the American blackmail So it is clear walthough there is some ambiguity as to whether they blamed Carter personally that they certainly that elements within the administration were EDS DOBRYNIN You mean on mine or on Brezhnev's HERSHBERG Both LEGVOLD You probably had similar reactions DOBRYNIN Well first of all i can say that I am sure that Brezhnev did not read it HERSHBERG Not even in translation DOBRYIN H He may have heard that there was a memoir but am sure he did not read it So it had no devastating effects on our foreign policy or on our government There v as no revolt there were no changes in the policy Of course those Vi ho did not know Henry well might have had some revelations if you know Henry as well as I do you will no that there was nothing really surprising Laughter I can gixe you one example not to go out of this room When he wrote his memoirs there were several sentences or descriptions- which to put it mildly were more fantasy than reality particularly dealing with his conversations with Brezhnev Henry always had it that he was on top and Brezhnev was lying down iLaughterJ Sometimes I acted as an interpreter during those comersations So I told Henry Look come on I was there This is not exactly what happened He replied Anatoly who will know Brezhnev is dead Russmn 332 tr it-3i w 331' '1l moi Ambassadors do not write memoirs and I do Laughter Well this was a ioke but it was a typical joke of Henry s So i would not exaggerate the importance of his memoir Of course his play around the Middle East was well-known to me at that time I could tell you a dramatic story about his handling of the situation in 1973 You will remember that Henry went to Moscow and discussed with Brezhnev and the Politburo how to prevent a further spread of the conflict Everything went fine He left and then within the next few days i heard in the press or on the radio that the United States had raised a military alert against the Soviet Union Probably you know that at that time we had a direct telephone line it is now an open secret i had a telephone and Henry had a telephone Only he could pick up at his end and only i could pick up in my embassy So I immediately called Henry and said Look here you were in Moscow Of course the situation is very dramatic but there is nothing really in the situation between the Soviet Union and the United States threatening conflict There is no military threat What are you talking about What kind of a military alert are you announcing And Henry said Anatoly this is a domestic issue Tomorrow it will end but don t tell anyone And that is the way he handled that situation Well at that time it was helpful That is not exactly the best way to conduct diplomacy- through a military alert of your armed forces I should pay tribute to Brezhnev he took it rather quietly He did not believe the alert was serious We knew that you had an alert but we did not respond because we could see no reason for it Sometimes Henry played a rather dangerous game it is in his character There is ere many other instances So his memoirs are revealing but I would not exaggerate the importance 333 of his memoirs or any one else s memoirs Memoirs are memoirs TROYANOVSRY What about your future memoirs DOBRYNIN I do not exaggerate Laughton LEGVOLD Thank you Anatoly DOBRYNIN Just to finish since all of my colleagues have expressed their attitude about the conference it looks as though you are eager to continue the discussion we are thankful for your efforts The organizers did an incredible job Bob Jim and Mark came to Moscow many times to prepare the groundwork and to gather materials they are very good at finding materials in our archives much better than we are ourselves They have done a very good job I think this conference was interesting for theoreticians - for those who are interested in ideology for academics and for practitioners In the past we have looked toamuch at these issues from the point of view of history That 5 good and useful but it was good idea to have Tom Pickering here now it gives the discussion a dimension of contemporary relevance Unfortunately Yuly Vorontsov couid not make it this time men time i hope What we really have not done quite as well as we could do is come to grips with the lost opportunities There were many lost opportunities during the Carter years in 334 asses ii ts different fields With skill and understanding we could have done many things We did some things but we could have done much more I am not as pessimistic as some of my colleagues if Carter had not insisted on his drastic reductions proposal and had skillfully wrapped up Vladivostok we could have moved on to accomplish many things There is a practical lesson in this and this conference has helped to make that clear to me i do not know how to publicize the work of this seminar series for practitioners for the people in my Foreign Ministry and in your State Department But that would be a very helpful thing to do They should know more about it Unfortunately this seminar is not very well-known except of course among a rather narrow group of people LEGVOLD We are giving very careful thought to exactly the problem you are raising I think it will be addressed DOBRYNIN I think that it should be because people are sitting here v ho know a lot and who could give good adtice Students not only in universnies but also students in diplomaCy should have access to these proceedings Now in Russia we hate new diplomatic personnel They should understand what was going on KOMOLOV Exactly i agree completely with Ambassador Dobrynin DOBRYNIN They in turn will have their own opinions We will learn something from 335 them too no doubt So I think it would be helpful to make it a less academic process But apart from that my personal feeling is that this was a very good idea this conference especially I think the process should continue i can speak for all of my colleagues and tell you that they would be pleased to accept any further invitations first to Norway and then maybe to some other exotic place afterwards Laughter LEGVOLD Okay thank you DOBRYNIN And I vtould like to thank Bill and Mark and everyone else for the wonderful job they have done and for all the assistance they have given to our people including me TROYANOVSKY And the young ladies DOBRYNIN Yes especially We applaud you Applause And many thanks for the Horn LEGVOLD i do not think i would have ever believed that you would say that Laughter DOBRYNIN It is the influence of the seminar BRENNER On behalf of the scholars we of course thank you JUSI ant to thank the 336 a El This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu