“Mister Nyet,” whose last move was to nominate the reformer
March 11, 1985, the Politburo. After the silence, the 75-year-old Gromyko rose first and named Gorbachev: "A soft smile, teeth of iron." The moment Mister Nyet — who had faced down the West for twenty-eight years — swung open the door of perestroika.
Foreign minister for twenty-eight years: from Yalta through the missile crisis, détente, and the Helsinki Accords, he represented the USSR at every defining moment of Cold War diplomacy. The nickname 'Mister Nyet' originated with his twenty-plus vetoes on the Security Council; his guiding maxim was 'better ten years of negotiations than one day of war.' Throughout the Brezhnev era, he led arms-control diplomacy while also participating in the decisions to intervene in Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979). Yet in March 1985, as doyen of the conservatives, he rose to nominate Gorbachev, unlocking perestroika: 'This man has a nice smile, but teeth of iron.' He died watching the era his own protégé had opened.
Career Timeline
- 1943–46Ambassador in Washington in his thirties
- 1944–45Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta, San Francisco: building the UN
- 1957–85Foreign Minister for twenty-eight years
- 1962The negotiating channel of the missile crisis
- 1970sSignatory of the détente treaties
- 1985Nominates Gorbachev; moves to the titular presidency
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarAmbassador to the US, engaged in wartime allied diplomacy and UN founding
- 1945.02–08The Yalta and Potsdam ConferencesAttended Yalta as ambassador to Washington and handled the UN's founding.
- 1950–1953The Korean WarAdvised returning to the Security CouncilShortly before Resolution 84 passed, he advised Stalin to return Malik to the Security Council; Stalin refused and ordered the boycott maintained.
- 1962The Cuban Missile CrisisDiplomacyAs foreign minister, he met Kennedy and denied the missile deployment amid the diplomatic struggle.
- 1969–1979Détente and the SALT NegotiationsSoviet foreign minister and negotiator at the Vladivostok summitAfter preparatory talks with Ford in Washington, he defended Soviet heavy ICBMs against American demands at the Vladivostok summit alongside Brezhnev.
- 1975The Helsinki Accordschief Soviet negotiatorIn Geneva he pushed frontier inviolability while dismissing Basket III as 'wastepaper,' insisting human rights provisions apply only where consistent with Soviet domestic law.
- 1979–1989The Soviet-Afghan WarForeign ministerAs foreign minister, he joined in the decision to intervene.
- 1985–1991Perestroika and GlasnostForeign minister, supported Gorbachev
- 1985–1989The New Thinking and the End of the Cold WarLeft the foreign ministry for the Presidium chairmanship, closing an era.
A Belarusian peasant's son, ambassador in Washington at thirty-four
Andrei Gromyko was born in 1909 in the village of Starye Gromyki in Belarus, a peasant's son. He studied economics and was headed for a researcher's life until the Great Terror changed his fate: when the purges swept away the senior ranks of the foreign affairs commissariat in the late 1930s, young party members of worker and peasant stock were promoted wholesale into the vacancies, Gromyko among them. Entering diplomacy in 1939, he was ambassador to the United States four years later, at thirty-four.
He took part in the working preparation of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, and signed the founding documents of the United Nations at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco; at the conferences that designed the postwar order he sat from beginning to end. He went on to be the first Soviet representative on the Security Council, ambassador in London, deputy minister, and from 1957 foreign minister, a post he held for twenty-eight years.
That career, serving nine leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev, was the very continuity of Soviet diplomacy. His remark to a negotiating partner became famous: behind you stand a few years of an administration; behind me stand decades of a state.
Architect of the UN — From Dumbarton Oaks to San Francisco
Andrei Gromyko's diplomatic career began with the founding of the United Nations. In August 1944, at just 35, the Soviet ambassador led the USSR delegation at the Dumbarton Oaks conference in Washington, where the UN Charter was drafted: a young man sitting as an equal with elder statesmen from the United States and Britain. At Yalta in February 1945, he helped secure the great-power veto structure of the Security Council, and at the San Francisco Conference (April–June 1945) he signed the UN Charter on behalf of the Soviet Union. In 1946, Gromyko was appointed the first Soviet Permanent Representative to the UN, serving on the Security Council until 1948. During this period, he wielded the veto more than twenty times in defence of Soviet interests, and this immovable style became the practical origin of his later nickname, 'Mister Nyet.' As one diplomatic historian put it: 'Gromyko was both an architect of the United Nations and the man who turned it into the front line of Soviet diplomacy.'
Mister Nyet — 28 Years of Cold War Diplomacy
Andrei Gromyko served as Soviet Foreign Minister for 28 years (1957-1985), the face and voice of Soviet diplomacy throughout the Cold War. Western diplomats nicknamed him 'Mister Nyet' for his immovable obstinacy at the negotiating table. His career traversed the USSR's entire rise to superpower status: the founding of the UN (1945), the secret backchannel of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the détente-era arms control treaties (SALT I & II, ABM Treaty), and the diplomatic justification of the 1979 Afghan intervention. Yet his final political act was ironic: in March 1985, as the doyen of the conservative old guard, he rose to nominate Gorbachev as General Secretary: 'This man has a nice smile, but teeth of iron.'
The kingmaker of March 1985: the iron teeth's last choice
On 11 March 1985, the day the Politburo chose Chernenko's successor, it was the doyen Gromyko who set the meeting's course. He rose before anyone else to nominate Gorbachev, and before the elder's endorsement the other contenders held their tongues. The judgement he is said to have passed on Gorbachev, a nice smile, but teeth of iron, became the most famous line of the succession drama. Later memoirs show the endorsement was a bargain arranged in advance: through his son Anatoly, Gromyko had been promised an honourable exit.
As promised, that July he handed the foreign ministry to Shevardnadze and became chairman of the Supreme Soviet Presidium, the ceremonial head of state. In silence he watched the New Thinking dismantle the line he had spent a lifetime building. When Gorbachev decided in the autumn of 1988 to take even that post himself, Gromyko retired; he died the following July.
Verdicts on his record divide: the Cold War professional who managed the nuclear age's crises through negotiation, or the name that stands for the rigid diplomacy of the stagnation years. What is certain is that his last political act underwrote the accession of the man who would transform, and finally dissolve, the Soviet Union.