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They finally settled on a dark horse: Leonid Brezhnev, then the figurehead Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the rubber-stamp parliament. They did not anticipate his further advance. Aware of his rather low intellect, they were convinced that this unprepossessing man would be unable to hold his own against them.
One exception was Gromyko. During Khrushchev's time he made a decision, which proved to be inspired, to cultivate Brezhnev. While others saw Brezhnev as a colorless, unimaginative party careerist without distinction, luck and instinct made Gromyko see something more. Gromyko took Brezhnev's responsibilities as nominal head of state seriously.
Gromyko also strengthened his personal ties to Brezhnev, taking up hunting so that he could join Brezhnev at his favorite sport. Until then, Gromyko had limited his exercise to morning workouts with barbells and occasional walks. If his hunting started as a political avocation, however, it became a real delight to him. I have never seen him as cheerful as he was one Sunday in 1972 when he entered his Vnukovo dacha before lunchtime proudly bearing a mangled duck he had brought down that morning, smiling with a sincere pleasure he rarely, if ever, shows the world. Through Brezhnev, whom he called by the nickname Lyonya, Gromyko achieved not just security but genuine authority over Soviet foreign policy.
Brezhnev moved very cautiously at first. A professional party apparatchik, he began to strengthen his position among his cronies and those with similar experiences and like views. By the spring of 1966, when I arrived back in Moscow from New York, Brezhnev had created a broader base of support. His power was becoming entrenched. Moscow jokesters were among the first to depict the attitude of the new leadership. Fedorenko told me a story that illustrated Brezhnev's power and the age-old Russian love of wordplay: A worker asked Brezhnev how to address him. He responded bashfully: "Just call me Ilyich." That was Brezhnev's patronymic--the same as Lenin's--and indicated that Brezhnev was far from bashful.
I saw that the egotistical image portrayed in the anecdotes around town was not far off the mark when I met Brezhnev while working on President de Gaulle's visit to Moscow in June 1966. For a long time after World War II, De Gaulle was portrayed by students at the Institute of International Relations as a chicken-brained cog in the military wheel, with pompous ambitions and fascistic dictatorial tendencies. Top political people regularly disparaged him, calling him a "long-nosed frog's legs." But now he was paying an official visit to Moscow, and I was asked to help in preparations.
During a meeting about the De Gaulle visit, I was struck by the contrast between Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Brezhnev's well-tailored suit, an elegant shirt with French cuffs and a pretentiously mannered style were very far from Khrushchev's baggy clothes and hearty, unaffected approach. Brezhnev exuded smug self-confidence, but he was also pleasant and cordial. After some small talk he slowly read the material prepared by us. I sensed in his platitudinous observations about our proposals that he was not sure what he was talking about.