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On the following pages, TIME presents the first of two excerpts from Breaking with Moscow, carrying Shevchenko from his early days as a diplomat through his participation on the edges of the summit meeting between Brezhnev and Richard Nixon in 1972.
Despite Shevchenko's distaste for the system he left behind, he maintains a high degree of respect for his erstwhile mentor, Gromyko, the book's dominant figure.
During the deep chill between Moscow and Washington over the past several years, many American specialists on Soviet affairs speculated that Gromyko had become the No. 1 hard-liner in the Kremlin and, as such, the principal obstacle to an improvement in relations. Nonsense, says Shevchenko. He is convinced that Gromyko is committed to the restoration of detente--a policy that Shevchenko, too, favors. Thus, paradoxically, Shevchenko's book is not just a denunciation of the Soviet leadership. It is also a grudging defense of one of that leadership's most powerful and conspicuous members.
"YOU KNOW, THE POLES HATE US"
From 1949 until 1954, I was a student in the dingy gray four-story building, half hidden by the ramparts of Krymsky Bridge, that housed the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Many of its graduates are now approaching top official status. This is particularly true of the Foreign Ministry, where two current deputy ministers, numerous ambassadors and chiefs of many key departments are alumni.
After graduation, I went on to do graduate work in disarmament. My study of this issue led to my first meeting with Andrei Gromyko, then First Deputy Foreign Minister. Gromyko's son and my fellow student, Anatoly, proposed in 1955 that we write a joint article on the role of parliaments in the struggle for peace and disarmament. Anatoly suggested we show the article to his father. He received us cordially at his apartment, a spacious set of rooms in one of the central Moscow buildings reserved for high government and party officials. His intent brown eyes, his whole appearance, reflected authority and self-confidence. After reading our manuscript attentively, Gromyko gave it his approval, making a few brief comments, sensible and to the point.
In the conversation that followed, Gromyko impressed me with the warmth of his remarks about the wartime Soviet-American alliance against Hitler's Germany. His favorite foreign films are those made in the U.S. during the war and postwar years when he lived in Washington and New York as a young diplomat. He remembers the actors' names and gives running commentaries on their performances and backgrounds. It is almost as though the Soviet- American alliance was the high point of his life, the idyl he seeks to recapture through his dealings with Americans. When Gromyko critiqued our article, the iciest days of the cold war were behind us, but his observations on the necessity and the possibility of restoring good if not truly friendly relations with the U.S. went well beyond the official Soviet stand.