Andrei Andreevich Gromyko

Foreign Minister Gromyko (1972)

Andrei Gromyko (* July 5 ^{. Jul} / 18th July  1909 ^greg. In Starye Gromyki in Gomel , Mogilev Governorate , Russian Empire , now Belarus as Andrei Burmakow ; † 2. July 1989 in Moscow ) was a Soviet politician.

From 1957 to 1985 he held the post of Foreign Minister of the USSR , making him the longest-serving foreign minister in the world after Saud ibn Faisal . From 1985 to 1988 Gromyko was chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet and thus head of state of the country.

Cyrillic ( Russian )
	Андре́й Андре́евич Громы́ко
Transl. :	Andrej Andreevič Gromyko
Transcr. :	Andrei Andreevich Gromyko
Cyrillic ( Belarusian )
	Андрэй Андрэевіч Грамыка
Łacinka :	Andrej Andrejevič Hramyka
Transl. :	Andrėj Andrėevič Hramyka
Transcr. :	Andrej Andrejewitsch Hramyka

Life

Gromykos father Andrei Matwejewitsch Burmakow was a small farmer and worker and fought as a soldier both in 1904/05 in the Russo-Japanese War and from 1914 to 1917 in the First World War . The mother Olga Evgenevna also came from a simple farming family. Her son grew up in the Belarusian district capital Wetka and used the new opportunities that opened up after the October Revolution even for children like him who came from a humble background. At the age of 13 he joined the local Komsomol and became its first secretary in 1923. Following Bolshevik tradition from the time of the underground struggle, he adopted a code name and called himself Gromyko after his place of birth. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union .

After attending a primary school in Gomel and a technical vocational school in Baryssau , he studied agriculture economics first in Minsk and later in Moscow. From 1936 to 1939 he was a professor at the Moscow Economic Institute. After the Stalin Purge , Gromyko came to the State Department for America in 1939. Soon afterwards he was sent to the USA and worked there at the Soviet embassy. In 1943 he was appointed ambassador to the USA. During the Second World War , as a close confidante of Foreign Minister Molotov, he played an important role in coordinating the activities of both countries. He also took part in the Yalta and Potsdam conferences and in the founding of the United Nations . He became known as a tough negotiator. In the West, he was nicknamed “Comrade Njet” in the 1940s because of his unyielding style of negotiation in the United Nations Security Council, or “Mr. Nyet ”or“ Grim Grom ”.

Gromyko (3rd from left) in conversation with US President John F. Kennedy in 1962

Tomb in Moscow

In 1946 Andrei Gromyko became the representative of the USSR in the United Nations Security Council . In 1952 and 1953 he served as ambassador to Great Britain . He then returned to the Soviet Union and was appointed Foreign Minister on February 15, 1957 - a position he held for 28 years. In this position he was directly involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and met with President Kennedy during the crisis . He was also involved in the negotiations for various arms restriction treaties , in particular the ABM treaty , the nuclear test ban treaty , SALT I and II, INF and START . During the Brezhnev years he was involved in the development of the détente between the superpowers.

Gromyko became a member of the Politburo in 1973 . A few months after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power , he appointed Eduard Shevardnadze as Soviet foreign minister in early July 1985. Gromyko then took over the chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and was thus head of state of the USSR (July 2, 1985 to October 1, 1988) - a purely representative office. Three years later he was ousted from office because of his conservative views. A year later he died shortly before his 80th birthday in Moscow. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

His son Anatoly Gromyko (1932–2017) was a diplomat, historian and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , his grandson Alexei Gromyko is also a historian and academician.

literature

• In the bibliographical Internet database RussGUS (freely accessible) almost 100 references are offered for "Gromyko" (search for subject notations under form search: 16.2.2 / Gromyko *).
• The borrowed thunder . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1959, pp. 38 ( online - 29 July 1959 ).
• Andrei Gromyko: memories. Econ, Düsseldorf, Vienna, New York 1989, ISBN 3-430-13525-7 .

Web links

Commons : Andrei Andrejewitsch Gromyko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Andrei Andrejewitsch Gromyko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Andrei Andrejewitsch Gromyko  in the German Digital Library
• Newspaper article about Andrei Andrejewitsch Gromyko in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Dossier on Andrei Gromyko at Spiegel Online
• Arkadij Nikolajewitsch Shevchenko: Moscow confidential (PDF; 1.4 MB), Der Spiegel 6, 1986, p. 116 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andrei Andrejewitsch Gromyko at Who's Who (last accessed: September 14, 2008).
2. ↑ http://www.gromyko.ru/index-e.htm
3. ↑ http://www.gromyko.ru/English/AboutUs/alexey.asp

predecessor	Office	successor
Konstantin Chernenko	Head of State of the Soviet Union 1985–1988	Mikhail Gorbachev
Dmitri Shepilov	Soviet Foreign Minister 1957–1985	Eduard Shevardnadze