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Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko has a more recent reason for personal bitterness toward the U.S. As Moscow's chief international spokesman, he took the brunt of worldwide opprobrium after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean airliner late last summer; when he was due in New York for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, local politicians refused to let him land at the area's commercial airports and Washington told him he would have to fly into a military field. Deeply offended, Gromyko called off the trip. Washington analysts believe he raised his increasingly influential voice in favor of a stick-it-to-the-Americans line during Politburo debates over the Olympics.
POLITICS. This, everyone agrees, is the fundamental reason for the pullout. The Soviet leaders, beset by economic troubles at home, unable to prevent the deployment of U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe and still burning over Reagan's characterization of them as "the focus of evil in the modern world," are in an angry and frustrated mood. They will do nothing even passively that might conceivably boost Reagan's standing, but on the contrary will seize every opportunity to embarrass him in an election year.
Reagan so far has reacted calmly. When White House Chief of Staff James Baker whispered the news of the Soviet pullout to the President as he sat through a luncheon commemorating the 100th birthday of Harry Truman, Reagan merely frowned and murmured, "Oh, no." He said nothing in public for 24 hours, and then took a calculated tone of sorrow rather than anger. Said the President: "It ought to be remembered by all [that] the Games more than 2,000 years ago started as a means of bringing peace between the Greek city-states. And in those days, even if a war was going on, they called off the war in order to hold the Games. I wish we were still as civilized."
Reagan's aides see nothing the White House can or should legitimately do to cajole the Soviets into participating in the Olympics, and no political danger for the President if Moscow holds to its determination to stay out. There will, perhaps, be some small loss of prestige; Reagan will not get quite the glory out of opening the Games that he would have with the Soviets and their satellites on hand. But there is little way the Democrats could exploit an Olympics issue even if they wanted to, which most do not. Walter Mondale, the most likely Democratic nominee, is about the last person in the country other than Jimmy Carter who can complain about a boycott of the Olympics, since he was Vice President when Carter organized the one the U.S. led in 1980.