VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 37

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MOSCOW'S Wasiton post tr Itto Man in 1,(144- The Middle

IN CONFIDENCE 's Ambassador to America's or Six Presidents (1962-1988) By Anatoly Dobrynin Times Books. 692 pp. $30

By Robert G. Kaiser

HIS IS an amazing book, first of all simply because it exists. A relative- ly candid memoir by a senior offi- Tcial of the Soviet Union is not the sort of volume American readers ever ex- SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10,4995 pected to see, but here it is. Better yet, it is a good book, a compelling historical ac- count of the Cold War from Kennedy through Reagan filled with historical scooplets, quotations from original Soviet documents, juicy gossip and memorable anecdotes. Anatoly Dobrynin, who served as a Sovi- et diplomat for half a century and as ambas- sador to the United States for half of that ca-

Robert G. Kaiser is managing editor of The Washington Post. He was The Post's corre- spondent in Moscow from 1971-74 and is the author of *Why Gorbachev Happened." ILLUSTRATIONS). GARY kIISKUPIC-FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

diplomacy in Washington. He even gives fluence and stubborn hard-liners, even as reer, is quite candid about the history he he acknowledges that the hard-liners often observed and occasionally was able to the Soviet side a significant measure of the had good cause for their skeptical views of nudge. He performs a great service for pos- blame for the Vietnam War, commenting Soviet intentions. terity by filling In Confidence with vivid, repeatedly that his leaders allowed them- Individually, many of the Americans Do- firsthand accounts of every Cold War con- selves to be used and manipulated by a gov- brynin worked with seemed to be in a sort frontation from the to ernment in Hanoi that showed no real con- of competition to see who could be more the shooting down of KAL Flight 007. He cern for Soviet interests. fawning and more indiscreet to the Soviet adds to the historical record of every one of Not that he absolves the Americans with them. And he blames nearly every one whom he worked, collectively or individual- ambassador. may enjoy largely on his own bosses in Moscow, com- ly. In the style of the Soviet man he has al- these memoirs less than most readers; oth- ways been, Dobrynin attributes anti-Soviet ers will be amused by the stories Dobrynin plaining that their isolated and ideological —Continued on page 10 view of the world constantly bedeviled his machinations to Pentagon cabals, Jewish in- )Ci'l.ti

UNITED PRESS INTERWIONRL Amatoly Dobryirdn with President Kennedy at the White House in March 1962 Anatoly Dobrynin ia*

Continued from page 1 Brezhnev was "the only foreign leader—includingf America's own allies—who had been able to find hu- tells of Kissinger's vanities and self-promotions. man words of cheer amidst his [Watergate] difficul- Perhaps the most intriguing revelation in the book ties." is Dobrynin's description of 's deter- Then on Dec. 13, 1973, continuing this private ex- mination to be 's staunchest supporter change, Nixon startled Dobrynin by giving him an un- through the trials of Watergate—"Nixon's last friend," expected analysis of current events based on conclu- as Dobrynin puts it. He describes an extraordinary pen- sions "he had come to ... only recently" about "Israeli pal relationship between the two men that began at the intransigence." Israel wanted a permanent state of end of 1973, after their second summit meeting and the war with the Arabs, Nixon said, adding that "Israel Yom Kippur War. The correspondence was prompted and the American Jewish community were anxious to by the hostilities in the Suez area, following an Ameri- prevent any improvement in Soviet-American rela- can nuclear alert that had alarmed the Soviets. tions." Israel's hard line, "encouraged in every way by Dobrynin writes that he personally was not so the politically influential Jewish lobby in America, alarmed by the alert, since he saw it as a tactical ma- which in turn helped shape American foreign policy," neuver by Kissinger, who, as he said at the time, was had pushed the United States into a situation "where lust playing the game." Kissinger himself told Do- its course ran counter to the whole world: the Arabs, brynin that the alert was prompted mostly by "domes- the Soviet Union, and nearly all its allies in Western tic considerations" and would be lifted in a day, as in- Europe as well as Japan." (These quotations are from deed it was. (At the time Kissinger publicly ridiculed Dobrynin's recollection of what Nixon said; he prides the suggestion that the alert could be attributed to do- himself on the accuracy of his accounts of such con- mestic considerations. He denied this in his memoirs versations, which he wrote down as soon as he could.) as well.) Soon afterward, "for his own private reasons," But, Nixon continued, he owed nothing to the Jew- Dobrynin writes, Kissinger privately expressed regret ish vote since "most Jews had always voted against over the alert, which he called a "rash move" for which him," so he was determined to pursue a balanced the White House was to blame. (Watergate was taking peace settlement in the Middle East. "He was also a heavy toll on the Nixon presidency at the time.) clearly vexed," Dobrynin continues, "by the hostile Nixon evidently realized the alert was a mistake campaign against him over Watergate by the mass and summoned Dobrynin to Camp David. He media. The president said that the American media promised to resume active cooperation, to restrain the were run 'essentially by the same Jewish circles.' Israelis in the wake of their victory over Egypt, and to With deep feeling he said their campaign knew no avoid future episodes of the same kind. "Please in- limits, and they had no idea of decency let alone form the general secretary [Brezhnev]," Dobrynin gratitude. In fact he used even stronger language quotes Nixon as saying, "that as long as I live and hold than that." the office of president I will never allow a real con- Nixon went on to make "a curious remark about frontation with the Soviet Union." He added to these Kissinger." After pointing out that "his Jewish origin pleasing words a confession that Watergate was part made him less vulnerable to the attacks of the Ameri- of the reason for what had happened. His enemies can Jewish community," Nixon noted that Kissinger were using Watergate to try to undermine his authori- "had at times strongly indulged Israel's nationalist sen- ty, which may have prompted him to lose his "cool" timents, for which he had to be corrected, but on the during the crisis, Nixon said. whole, the president was convinced that Kissinger was Dobrynin forwarded this unusual confession to working along the right lines." Brezhnev, who was apparently moved by it and re- Alas, Dobrynin took Nixon's anti-Semitic diatribe sponded with the first of a series of supportive person- at face value and passed it on to Moscow. Brezhnev al messages to Nixon. should like from the depths responded, not surprisingly, by saying that the presi- of my heart to wish you energy and success in over- dent's comments on Israel and the Middle East "coin- , coming. all kinds of difficulties, the causes of which cided with the view of the Soviet leadership." Do- are not easily seen at h'dislanCe," he wrote. Nixon was brynin ends his account of this hitherto-undisclosed • delighted with this message and told Dobrynin that Nixon-Brezhnev correspondence by observing: "The irony of the situation was that during this period acteristic passage. Dobrynin wants his readers to be- Nixon seemed to be as frank, direct, and even cynical lieve that he maintained a personal moral code while in conversations with his old communist enemies as representing men in Moscow who did not. This read- he was with friends, if not more so." er concluded that Dobrynin sincerely believed this, and that he generally had a right to do so. (later, he OBRYNIN'S account teaches an important says, he was kept in the dark about Soviet plans to in- lesson. As the official documents begin to vade Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in pour out of Soviet and American archives, 1979.) Dscholars will be tempted to overstate the im- The Nixon administration gave Dobrynin his great- portance of one or another documentary revelation, est opportunities to pursue his own diplomatic agen- when the real story of the Cold War is largely a hu- da. The Soviet leadership was initially so alarmed at man drama. Dobrynin was on hand for much of it—he the prospect of a Nixon presidency that Dobrynin was took part in every Soviet-American summit from 1955 instructed to offer Hubert H. Humphrey, Nixon's 1968 to 1990—and he watched the spectacle with a de- opponent, any form of aid he might want, including tached, sometimes bemused eye. money. (Dobrynin was enormously relievgd when Detente was Dobrynin's cause. He believed Humphrey cut off the conversation by saying it was throughout that the Soviet Union and the United "more than enough for him to have Moscow's good States could manage to coexist peacefully and avoid wishes.") But three and a half years later Dobrynin nuclear confrontation if only their leaders would pur- was busily preparing for Nixon's first presidential vis- sue sensible diplomacy. Though his account occa- it to Moscow, where the first strategic arms limitation sionally feels self-aggrandizing, Dobrynin clearly did treaty was signed and detente officially began. play a substantial personal role in keeping the two su- Dobrynin had an especially clear—and embarrass- ing—view of the spectacle of Nixon's paranoia. He was repeatedly cautioned not to tell the hapless secre- "Perhaps the most tary of State, William Rogers, secrets that Nixon or Kissinger had confided in him. To promote the "confidential channel," which for intriguing revelation in Dobrynin came to represent his finest moments as am- bassador, Kissinger had a special telephone installed the book is Dobrynin's in the Soviet embassy on 16th Street—a "second hot line," in Dobrynin's words, "which required no dialing description of Leonid and was not dependent on the ordinary telephone net- work." He and Kissinger "used it all the time. Its very existence has been kept secret until now." Brezhnev's determination It is hard sometimes to realize that Dobrynin is writing about the one international relationship that to be Richard Nixon's could at any moment have ruptured into catastrophic thermonuclear war. More often in this account the So- viet-American ballet resembles a high school roman- staunchest supporter tic intrigue, with the two parties bound to yet baffled by one another, both groping to figure out the other's through the trials of real intentions. Dobrynin seems never to have lost a night's sleep Watergate." worrying about nuclear holocaust, at least not after the Cuban crisis. He was certain, he writes repeated- perpowers out of the hottest water. He was certainly ly, that none of the leaders in Moscow wanted war or the most significant diplomat of the Cold War era. even had a serious plan for world domination. Yes, But he wasn't always an insider. In 1962, his first they believed in a vague but hopeful communist doc- year as the Soviet ambassador in Washington, he trine that considered the ultimate victory of their "so- freely and repeatedly lied to his American interlocu- cialism" inevitable, but by Dobrynin's account they tors about what was going on in Cuba because, he in- weren't prepared to take serious risks to speed that sists plausibly, he was "an involuntary tool of deceit" process along. who was never told the truth—and was instructed to tell lies—about the events that provoked the missile OBRYNIN has no trouble denouncing hard- crisis. "This deliberate use of an ambassador by his liners in the United States for their irrational own government to mislead an American administra- anti-Sovietism. The., anti-Soviet American tion remained a moral shock to me for years to come who most baffles Dpbrynin is Ronald Rea- and left me more cautious and critical of the informa- gan.D He criticizes Reagan but admires him; attacks his tion I received from Moscow," he writes. It is a char- policies yet credits him with crucial steps that helped end the Cold War. Dobrynin forcefully and effectively rebuts the argument that Reagan somehow deserves credit for the series of domestic events that unraveled the Soviet Union, but also says that Reagan's Strategic Daily Book World Defense Initiative jolted the Soviets to think much harder about the need for arms control. By turning The following books are scheduled to be re- from confrontation to negotiation with Moscow in his viewed this week in Style: second term, Dobrynin concludes, Reagan made it ' COLOR LINES: The Troubled Dreams of possible for Gorbachev to launch his reforms. Racial Harmony in an American Town, by In the end Dobrynin's world collapsed. Gorbachev Mike ..Kelly. Reviewed by Jim Sleeper. brought him back to Moscow in 1986 to become a member of the Party leadership as secretary of the THIEF OF LIGHT, by David Ramus. In this Central Committee responsible for international rela- thriller an art expert finds himself involved with tions, but this apparent promotion never brought Japanese gangsters and fake masterpieces. Re- much power or satisfaction. viewed by Dennis Drabelle. Dobrynin looked on helplessly as Gorbachev floun- dered, then failed, a process he describes bitterly at CITY LIFE: Urban Expectations in a New the end of his book. He concludes that a more skillful World, by Witold Rybczynski. Reviewed by reform program that preserved "all positive achieve- Jonathan Yardley. ments" and eliminated "major shortcomings and mis- - takes of the past in a carefully planned and evolution- THE GIRL WHO DIED TWICE: The Libby ary way" would have created a renewed Soviet Union Zion Case and the Hidden Hazards of Hos- that could have developed into a successful nation pital* by Natalie Robins. Reviewed by Susan that "ranked high among the democratic countries of Garrett. the world." Yes, and then the moon would be made of Roquefort cheese. OBLIVION, by Josephine Hart. In this novel But when he sticks to the subjects he really knows, a British television producer finds himself Dobrynin is a fine analyst and a wonderful raconteur. haunted by the memory of his dead wife. Re- He has left a record of his life and his times that will viewed by.Carolyn See. enrich Cold Wat history for as long as anyone carts to