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I was nearly finished with my dissertation when I was summoned to see Semyon Tsarapkin, head of the Foreign Ministry department in charge of United Nations and disarmament affairs. I found him posing like a czar behind his desk, strutting amid the disorder of an office piled with heaps of papers and books, ornamented by a battery of telephones, and infused with an oppressive sense of his abrasive personality.
"We're starting a new policy that will mean serious negotiating on disarmament," he began. "It's one thing to study such matters, but it's something else to be involved in the real work. Why don't you come on for a time and find out for yourself how you like it?" I joined the ministry in October 1956.
Almost immediately, nearly everyone's attention was focused on Poland and Hungary. In October, Wladyslaw Gomulka had been elected First Secretary of the Polish party's Central Committee in defiance of the Soviets. Khrushchev and other leaders felt constrained to accept Gomulka because they were loath to suppress the Poles by force. "You know," a friend in the Foreign Ministry told me, "the Poles hate us; they would fight at the drop of a hat." I knew it was true. Still, there was no danger that Poland could break away from us.
More shocking to me were events in Hungary. In the explosion following the "Polish October," I thought that Imre Nagy had gone too far in declaring Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and his attempt at disrupting that nation's socialist system. Still, I was shaken by the brutality of the reprisals. It was in this context that I first heard of Yuri Andropov, our Ambassador to Hungary. A classmate at our embassy in Budapest described how Andropov handled the erupting crisis: "He was so calm, even while the bullets were flying--when everyone else at the embassy felt as if we were in a besieged fortress."
My friend also told me that before and during the critical days of the uprising Moscow's instructions were sometimes confusing and occasionally betrayed a lack of understanding of what was really going on. Andropov's advice to Moscow, however, was extensive and served as a basis for swift decisions, including the decision to crush the rebellion with tanks.
FOILING A
PALACE COUP
As I began work in the United Nations and disarmament section, I discovered how lucky I was. The "Germanists," the "disarmament boys," the "Americanists," the "Europeans" (chiefly concerned with Soviet-French relations) and a small group of others belonged to a privileged caste. We were envied by the "provincials," who frequently spent their entire careers in Africa and Asia. Not only was this an unattractive fate because of the unpleasant climates, low salaries and lack of consumer goods, but diplomats assigned to these areas seldom advanced to senior positions.
The privileged ones, on the other hand, were almost constantly in close proximity to the leadership. Gromyko knew many of them personally, remembered their names, and fostered the careers of the most able. This group formed the backbone of the younger generation in the ministry.