Getting Along With The Adversary: Brezhnev and Kissinger

Authentic Histories Well, one wise man was right when he said the following: it is the voice used to say words rather than the words themselves that matters in politics. Do you doubt it? Here is an authentic story that is not known to the wider public. It tells about a leader of a superpower […]

The post Getting Along With The Adversary: Brezhnev and Kissinger appeared first on KyivPost.

Authentic Histories

Well, one wise man was right when he said the following: it is the voice used to say words rather than the words themselves that matters in politics. Do you doubt it? Here is an authentic story that is not known to the wider public. It tells about a leader of a superpower that determined the fate of the bipolar world in the twentieth century.

It is about a native of Ukraine. He was born in the town of Kamyansky near the present-day city of Dnipro in 1906. He came from an ethnic Russian family, and he sometimes wrote “Russian” or “Ukrainian” in the “Nationality” box when filling in questionnaires. He is one of the brightest examples of how “our” people (that is, natives of Ukraine) served first the tsarist and then the red empire.

This native is the Soviet party and state leader Leonid Brezhnev. It was he who took an active part in the overthrow of his eccentric political predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev.

After Khrushchev’s Thaw, which took almost a decade, Brezhnev’s so-called “stability” (it is often called “stagnation”) seemed never-ending. Leonid Ilyich ruled for 18 years. His accomplices in the anti-Khrushchev uprising who brought him to the top of the political Olympus in October 1964 considered him a “transitional” figure.

“Transitional” indeed Leonid Brezhnev gradually removed those who were cherishing the hope that one day they would replace him with those who, being tired of the eccentricity not only of reforms but also of Khrushchev’s behavior, sincerely believed that a predictable and controllable leader was needed. Brezhnev surrounded himself with loyal “courtiers” and began a bloodless re-Stalinization. Gradually, he concentrated power in his hands, turning from a lover of life in all its manifestations (he loved women, drinking, collecting Western cars) to “dear Leonid Ilyich,” without whom the then-ruling Kremlin gerontocracy could not exist.

At the end of his life, he repeatedly asked his comrades from the Politburo to let him retire. They did not: who would they be without him? As a result, Leonid Brezhnev, a prisoner of the nomenklatura, died in office in November 1982. He was buried on Red Square, near the Kremlin wall, with all due honors.

Leonid in his prime

Now let us move to 1972. Leonid Brezhnev and the then U.S. President Richard Nixon had signed about a dozen different accords between the Soviet Union and the United States in Moscow. The following year, Brezhnev was to go to Washington, D.C. 

National Security Advisor to Nixon and, then, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger came to Moscow in May 1973 to finalize that visit. Brezhnev was already acquainted with him, since in April 1972 Kissinger had been in Moscow, preparing for the May visit of his boss. It was then that they met for the first time, had a long conversation in the presence of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Gromyko. That was when Brezhnev saw something special in Kissinger…

Not without reason, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for some reason decided in May 1972 that it was best to hold talks in Zavidovo, a huge hunting farm 150 kilometers from Moscow. That was where the Americans were invited to spend five days. Preparations began. Kissinger was given khaki-color breeches, a paramilitary jacket, and boots to put on.

They went to Zavidovo. The Americans were accommodated in a new comfortable house, and Brezhnev settled in his mansion. Official talks were held in another separate building. And they went hunting as well.

Before they went for hunting, Brezhnev managed to arrange a ride for Kissinger in a Rolls-Royce from his own collection of cars, as well as a voyage by boat. Those were high-speed activities. And Brezhnev was personally behind the wheel of the car and the motor boat.

The next day they went hunting. Leonid Brezhnev, Henry Kissinger, translator Viktor Sukhodrev, and a huntsman climbed a wooden hunting tower. The translator was carrying a heavy bag, which the bodyguards gave him before the climbing, noting that the bag had everything necessary after the hunt.

Leonid Brezhnev, with pleasure and knowledge of hunting, shot at wild boars, which appeared near the tower after a while. After the hunt, he looked closely at the translator and asked, “Well, let’s look what we have got there?” Victor Sukhodrev took out bread, sausage, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, knives, forks, and glasses from his bag. And…a bottle of vodka.

Brezhnev looked at Kissinger and said firmly: “Well, Henry, let’s start? Don’t be lazy, take a knife and cut the sausage!” And the world-famous American politician dutifully obeyed the Secretary General’s command. Moreover, he drank vodka on an equal footing with him.

When they had some vodka, it became clear that Leonid Brezhnev had invited Henry Kissinger to the hunting farm for a certain reason. The conversation about China began. Brezhnev was dissatisfied with the fact that the United States could play the “Chinese card,” that is, by blackmailing the Soviet Union with the prospect of establishing special relations with China. Brezhnev was particularly displeased with Richard Nixon’s toast at a Shanghai dinner in February 1972. “Our two peoples,” the American president said at the time, “tonight hold the future of the world in our hands.”

“How should we understand that?” Leonid Brezhnev was indignant, knowing about the tense Soviet-Chinese relations. Henry Kissinger explained that the United States’ policy toward China was not against the interests of the Soviet Union, and that Nixon’s statement was made at the dinner, without a prepared text, impromptu. And, what was more, after a good dose of Maotai, a distilled Chinese liquor.

And everything was settled down. Brezhnev went to Washington, D.C. The American-Soviet rapprochement happened. While speaking to Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin in December 1973, Richard Nixon said that the future of the world was in the hands of the United States and the Soviet Union.

And if Henry Kissinger had refused to cut the sausage and drink the vodka, this could not have happened. However, he replaced the vodka with beer, when he mentioned the hunt in Zavidovo in his memoirs, believing that otherwise the readers in the United States would not understand it.

But that, as they say, doesn’t matter at all.

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