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Gromyko is a tough boss. Not only does he expect anyone he calls to appear instantly, but his most desultory suggestion is to be observed as a crisis order. Shortly after I joined his staff, he put me to work on his address to the U.N. in the fall and told me casually to find the right people to work on the project. Early the following week he asked me whom I had chosen. I said I would soon have a roster for him. His head snapped toward me, and he fixed me with a finger stabbing the air as he raved for a good half-hour about my being a stupid, irresponsible ass who did not have the ears to hear his instructions. Yet the next day he greeted me in his usual manner.
An order to report to his office inevitably strikes dread in the recipient, even a Deputy Foreign Minister. Impatience rather than vindictiveness is Gromyko's hallmark in dealing with those who rank beneath him. That is typical of top Soviet bureaucrats. They are rude to their underlings to demonstrate their own importance. Gromyko will often call a meeting of his three or four ranking assistants and, if he is in a bad mood, vilify them as "dolts" or "schoolboys" who are "not fit to work in the Foreign Ministry." A report with a few minor errors or a document submitted late can touch off one of these explosions, though it usually passes quickly.
Gromyko has little interest in the Third World. He would rarely see Foreign Ministry officials concerned with developing countries and, despite countless invitations, has never visited any black African nation. Except for Cuba, he has never been to a Latin American country. China interests him primarily through the prism of Moscow-Washington-Peking politics. I once had an argument about all this with Vadim Zagladin, deputy to Boris Ponomarev, chief of the Central Committee's International Department. Speaking of Africa, I remarked on the futility of "playing with some pissant little 'liberation' committees that come into being overnight and disappear after a few months." Zagladin's response was revealing: "You sound just like your boss. Gromyko has no smell for the ideological side of things. He's just too pragmatic, and so are you. You Foreign Ministry people don't understand the power of Communist ideas in the world and the way to exploit them."
Gromyko sent me abroad several times as his representative. My diplomatic mission to Africa in 1971 was depressingly instructive. Because of economic deficiencies and bureaucratic inertia at home we would be hard put to meet the expectations our expansionist diplomacy aroused. Instead of gaining friends, we would, in many instances, lose credibility. In their own policies toward the Third World, it seemed difficult for Americans to realize that a number of these initially Moscow-oriented countries did not want to emulate the Soviet model. The West's great advantage is that, except in a state of war, in the long run economic assistance will always pay bigger dividends than will military aid.
That same year, 1971, I was also sent to sound out Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania on a treaty to liquidate chemical and biological weapons. The Soviet Union has consistently depicted itself as a leader in the effort to destroy these ghastly weapons. In fact, it has always continued to expand its sophisticated chemical and biological weapons production programs.