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At one point I teased Anatoli Dobrynin about how easy a time he must be having in Washington with Kissinger. Dobrynin took my remark seriously and blurted out that Kissinger was not as nice in most negotiations and that you had to be constantly alert with him. "Before you can open your mouth, he'll find out things he can use against you later," he said.
Gromyko interjected, "And he's as slippery as a snake--he doesn't let anyone see what's on his mind." Gromyko made his observation without any hostility. Even with an adversary, what counted with Gromyko was seriousness. % He found Kissinger serious. He took enormous pains to prepare for each meeting with him, approaching the sessions with the eagerness of a bridegroom on his wedding night.
The Soviet leaders enjoyed working with Kissinger so much that in Gromyko's inner cabinet after the Moscow summit he was referred to by his Russian nickname, Kisa (pussycat). In no way did this mean that they viewed him as easy to deal with or as being in their corner, but it has always been the Russian custom to devise fond nicknames for people they like and respect.
Gromyko assesses the U.S. in terms of its might and its potential as a rival in world affairs. Like many of his colleagues, Gromyko respects American power. Unlike a number of others, however, he strongly believes that the U.S. is not only the Soviet Union's main adversary but in some respects also a partner, as long as the interests of both nations--temporary or more long term --are parallel or coincide. To the extent that he can, he pursues a course of making the relationship with America the most important area of diplomacy.
Western speculation has given Gromyko the dubious honor of being the single most influential initiator of the Kremlin's ultrahard line toward the U.S. in the 1980s. This speculation seems to me far wide of the mark. Gromyko was much more an architect of detente with the U.S. than a simple executor, and he is associated with it more intimately than any other present Politburo member. He clashed with the staunchly anti-American Defense Minister Grechko over detente to such an extent that the two men were sometimes not on speaking terms for weeks. Gromyko's views prevailed in the end.
It was in fact Gromyko, not Dobrynin, who was at the Soviet end of the Kissinger-Dobrynin diplomatic channel during the Nixon Administration. When Dobrynin's reports arrived in Moscow, Gromyko was the first to receive them; he decided to whom they should be shown, and his proposals served as the basis for decisions on Soviet-American affairs. Gromyko also tried to restrain --often in vain--the anti-American zeal of that quintessential cold warrior at the U.N., Yakov Malik.