Memoirs - Hardcover

Gromyko, A.A.; Gromyko, Andrei Andreevich

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44 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091738083 ISBN 13: 9780091738082

Publisher: Doubleday, 1990

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Andrei Gromyko has held high office in the Soviet government for more than 50 years, serving under every leader from Stalin to Gorbachev. As his country's Foreign Minister, he met and negotiated with almost every world leader. His memoirs describe the intrigues of power-politics behind the scenes in the Kremlin, and the characters and events which have dominated his political life. They provide unprecented insight into half a century of Soviet and world politics. We learn of Gromyko's upbringing in a small village far from the main cities, of his academic prominence and courtship of his wife, Lidia Grinevich. We see him, already in 1939, as ambassador to Washington, then in Yalta alongside Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. The book provides portraits of all his leading political contemporaries, and revelations, such as the time Chairman Mao asked for Soviet support for an atomic bombing of American forces.

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Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

From Library Journal:

These memoirs give us a glimpse of a figure who has until now seemed little more than a rather cardboard, archetypal Soviet politician. Gromyko, who died in July 1989, tells of his early years in a small Russian village; his experience in the traumatic Russian Civil War; and his steady rise to the top (foreign minister for over half a century) of the Soviet political hierarchy. He also renders portraits of the century's most fascinating personalities, ranging from Richard Nixon to Charlie Chaplin. His personal views of Stalin, presented in a separate chapter, shed no new light on the dictator, but are significant given their source--a Soviet statesman who devoted his public life to the state Stalin created. This book will interest students of U.S.-Soviet relations and political leadership in the Soviet Union.
-Kim H. Tunnicliff, Albion Coll., Mich.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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