Spring Books

ADAM B. ULAM

A BYELORUSSIAN peasant’s son, Andrei Gromyko had a dazzling start to his official career. At 29, after serving as a research assistant in an economics institute, he was made head of the American section of the commissariat of foreign affairs, half a year later counselor in Washington, and then at 34, in the middle of World War II, ambassador to the United States. The American reader should be told that this advancement was made possible by the veritable slaughter of the Soviet diplomatic corps during the purges, which made somebody with even rudimentary knowledge of English a rare commodity in official Moscow. But the author undoubtedly had other talents, for his career flourished thereafter: ambassador to the United Nations, ambassador to Great Britain, foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. In 1973, by entering the Politburo, he became one of the rulers of his country.

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ADAM B. ULAM

A BYELORUSSIAN peasant’s son, Andrei Gromyko had a dazzling start to his official career. At 29, after serving as a research assistant in an economics institute, he was made head of the American section of the commissariat of foreign affairs, half a year later counselor in Washington, and then at 34, in the middle of World War II, ambassador to the United States. The American reader should be told that this advancement was made possible by the veritable slaughter of the Soviet diplomatic corps during the purges, which made somebody with even rudimentary knowledge of English a rare commodity in official Moscow. But the author undoubtedly had other talents, for his career flourished thereafter: ambassador to the United Nations, ambassador to Great Britain, foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. In 1973, by entering the Politburo, he became one of the rulers of his country.