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Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project VLADIMIR LEHOVICH Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 25, 1997 Copyright 2016 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in New York, New York of Russian-born parents Harvard College Entered Foreign Service - 1962 USIS Soviet Union Exhibition 1961-1962 Meeting Soviet citizens USIS cadre Soviet-China tensions KGB Ballet Soviet failure State Department - A-100 Course 1962 Class composition Dean Rusk advice USAID - University of California at Berkeley – Southeast Asia Studies 1962-1963 Instruction Atmosphere Criticism of course Vietnamese language program Saigon, Vietnam - USAID Rural Affairs Program 1963-1965 Ngo Dinh Diem Organization Mekong Delta operation Strategic hamlet program Corruption Diem’s death - reaction Relations with U.S. embassy AID leadership 1 Saigon, Vietnam - Provincial Reporting Unit 1965-1966 Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Phil Habib Vietnam businesswomen U.S. military presence influence Reporting U.S. press reporting McNamara views CIA Foreign advisors U.S. VIPs Senator Ted Kennedy visit Governor Romney “brain-washing” Daniel Ellsberg visit State Department - INR - Soviet Affairs 1966-1968 INR’s role Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia Dubcek-Brezhnev meeting Czech Task Force (Vietnam TDY - 1966) Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies - Atlantic 1968-1969 Affairs U.S. public and Vietnam Tet offensive Brussels, Belgium - U.S. Mission to European Community 1969-1971 Ambassador J. Robert Schaetzel “Chicken war” U.S. relationship to European Community Common Market bureaucracy Duties as political officer U.S. agricultural attache office French interests State Department - NATO Affairs 1971-1973 Conventional Force Reduction Negotiation - MBFR Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird Problems in force reduction Soviets and force reduction National Security Council role Henry Kissinger role Arms Control Agency Congressional views U.S. and Brezhnev 2 French and NATO NATO-Warsaw Pact talks Jonathan Dean Kissinger-Soviet “secret” talks State Department - Office of the Counselor 1973-1974 Soviet-U.S. relations Soviet desk capabilities Kissinger and Soviets Hal Sonnenfeldt State Department - European Bureau - NATO Affairs 1974-1977 Eurocommunism Portugal and NATO Ambassador to Portugal Frank Carlucci Spain and NATO Italy and NATO Greece and NATO Greek-Turkey rivalry NATO Secretary General Joseph Lewis Bonn, Germany - Political Officer 1977-1980 Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Neutron bomb issue Carter’s “about-face” Troops “out of Korea” issue Carter and Brezhnev “love affair” Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Moscow Olympics boycott Missile issues East German reactions Germany’s Green Party State Department - Deputy Director for European Security - NATO 1980-1982 Nuclear missile development Public view of missile deployment Reagan and defense issues Casper Weinberger Poland and Soviets Pope John Paul II Muskie frustrations Secretary of State Haig Senior Seminar 1982-1983 Vienna, Austria - MBFR 1983-1986 3 Conventional European Force Reduction negotiations Delegation personnel and philosophies NATO/Warsaw Pact meetings Gorbachev Soviet view of Reagan Warsaw Pact delegation NATO delegations Father Popieluscu’s death Major Anderson’s death Soviet army State Department - Deputy Assistant Secretary - Political Affairs 1986-1989 Issues Aid to Egypt and Israel AIPAC dinner (1987) U.S. Mideast military sales Iran-Iraq war “Arabist” issue Mideast missile control Chinese missiles Canada and nuclear submarine capability Nuclear free zones Secretary of State James Baker Soviet Union collapse American University - Diplomat in Residence 1989-1990 Soviet developments Faculty State Department - Board of Examiners 1990-1991 African Americans Foreign Service Officer Examination changes Examining the exam process The age factor State Department - Office of Deputy Secretary of State for 1991 Ex-Soviet Assistance Assistance problems Operation Provide Hope Soviet economic transition Soviet Marshall Plan idea Interludes - USUN - European Advisor 1991-1992 Issues Ex-Soviet nations Koreas 4 Iraq State Department - Foreign Service Institute - Dean, Professional Studies 1992-1995 Student enrollment Courses of training Issues and problems Model embassy training Working versus training FSI changes Foreign Service national training Foreign diplomat training Language training Retirement 1995-1996 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Issues INTERVIEW Q: Today is the 25th of March, 1997. This is an interview with Vladimir Lehovich. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Vlad and I are old friends. Vlad, can we start off by when and where were you born and can you tell me a bit about your family? LEHOVICH: I was born in New York in 1939. Q: When you say "New York," you mean the city? LEHOVICH: I mean the city, Manhattan. I'm using shorthand. One from New York says "I'm from the Bronx or Brooklyn or Manhattan." I was born and raised in New York and went off to college when I was just s hort of 18. I went to Cambridge, Mass. to Harvard College. But other than that, it was a New York upbringing. My parents were both Russians. My father was born in St. Petersburg in 1901 and my mother was born the daughter of a Russian diplomat in Rome in 1908. They came to New York at various times. First, my father in 1924, and 1930 in the case of my mother. They met there, got married there, and that's where the great clan of Lehovich grew up. Q: Now, what type of business was your father in? LEHOVICH: He was by proclivity a historian who joined a bank as a young man, got locked into it with the depression, and stayed in banking his whole life and wrote history on the margins of his other work. He was a fine scholar and historian, and an excellent writer. Q: What sort of family did your father come from in St. Petersburg? 5 LEHOVICH: He was from a family that had tended to be career military and career civil service for probably about 70 years before he was born. His father, my grandfather, was a general in the Russian army and was commander of Russian artillery during World War One. The family would originally go back to Polish/Lithuanian origins but had been Russified for a good 250 years. Q: You say your mother was- LEHOVICH: My mother was from an old, princely Russian family, the Ourusoffs. She came in 1930 from France. She had finished school there and studied art in America at Parson’s School of Design and was on her way to a professional career in art. As in the case of my father, she got caught up by the Depression and wound up doing other things for a living. She worked in several places. She was a salesgirl for Bloomingdale's, Macy's and Gimbel’s. She got fired from all three eventually for being rather candid with the customers about where the good bargains were and where the bad bargains were. In hindsight this was lucky because in 1934, she linked up with a new project called the School of American Ballet, which was the creature of George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Vladimir Dimitriev, who was the third of the founders. They created the School of American Ballet, which over time became legendary in the American ballet world. She was with them at the creation as a secretary and quickly became a good manager and later on the school’s executive director. Kirstein and Balanchine branched out to create the New York City Ballet Company and basically define American classical ballet for decades to come. She stayed with the school until her death in 1975, just over 40 years. Q: Tell me about being a young lad growing up. First of all, did you have any brothers and sisters? LEHOVICH: I have one sister who is a bit older than I. She is a teacher of French in New Jersey. Q: What was it like growing up in this certainly Russophile - I'm not sure if it was Russophile at that point - I assume it wasn't Sovietophile. LEHOVICH: It was Russophile and also Americanophile. Q: But this family had certainly deep roots in another country, but also deep routes in the art history world and the history world and all that and in the middle of Manhattan. LEHOVICH: Well, it was very exciting and it was exciting intellectually. New York is always a terrific place. When one has nothing to do in New York, go out and take a walk in the streets. The biggest hobby of most people, certainly most young people in New York, is to drop everything they're doing and go out. There are a hundred things you do when you go out. I used to just take walks. I walked over huge parts of the city. I also did a lot of art. I got very interested in art as an observer, not as a practitioner. The town is museum rich, so one samples those places and eventually gets to know sort of all the collections in town. 6 Q: Where did you go to school? LEHOVICH: I went to a fine old school called Collegiate School, which is on West 77th in New York, and has the distinction of being the oldest private school in America. It was founded by conservative estimates in 1638 and by radical estimates in 1628. It ceased to exist for about three years; it was closed during the American Revolution, but otherwise it's been functioning for quite a while. It's a Dutch school by tradition and is closely tied to the Dutch West Reformed Church next door to it. It has the great virtue of beating the King James Bible into the heads of its student body four days a week every week. Next to Shakespeare, there is nothing better. Four days a week goes a long way.
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