DIPLOMACY: Determined Suitor

It was the most ebullient display of pressing the flesh since the days of Lyndon Johnson's breathless world tours At various times on Leonid Brezhnev's historic four-day visit to Bonn, television cameras caught the Soviet party chief kissing the hand of Chancellor Willy Brandt's wife Rut, bear-hugging the minister-president of North Rhine Westphalia, Heinz Kiihn, and talking to Brandt's diminutive foreign policy adviser Egon Bahr with both hands on his shoulders. Brezhnev grinned and waved at crowds so relentlessly, in fact, that his grandstanding seemed to nettle Brandt—no mean crowd pleaser...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!