53 Facts About Andrei Gromyko

Andrei Gromyko served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

Andrei Gromyko became the Soviet ambassador to the United States in 1943, leaving that position in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.

Andrei Gromyko went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.

Andrei Gromyko was born to a poor "semi-peasant, semi-worker" Belarusian family in the Belarusian village of Staryye Gromyki, near Gomel, on 18 July 1909.

Gromyko's father, Andrei Matveyevich, worked as a seasonal worker in a local factory.

Andrei Gromyko Matveyevich was not a very educated man, having only attended four years of school, but knew how to read and write.

Andrei Gromyko attended school only for a short period of time as, when her father died, she left to help her mother with the harvest.

Andrei Gromyko grew up near the district town of Vetka where most of the inhabitants were devoted Old Believers in the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the age of thirteen Andrei Gromyko became a member of the Komsomol and held anti-religious speeches in the village with his friends as well as promoting Communist values.

Andrei Gromyko Matveyevich returned home on the eve of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia.

Andrei Gromyko was elected First Secretary of the local Komsomol chapter at the beginning of 1923.

Andrei Gromyko followed his mother's advice and, after finishing seven years of primary school and vocational education in Gomel, he moved to Borisov to attend technical school.

Andrei Gromyko became a member of the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks in 1931, something he had dreamed of since he learned about the "difference between a poor farmer and a landowner, a worker and a capitalist".

Andrei Gromyko was voted in as secretary of his party cell at his first party conference and used most of his weekends doing volunteer work.

Andrei Gromyko received a very small stipend to live on, but still had a strong nostalgia for the days when he worked as a volunteer.

Andrei Gromyko advised Borisevich that he would have difficulty living on a meager student stipend.

Andrei Gromyko accepted the offer, moving his family to Minsk in 1933.

In 1936, after another three years of studying economics, Andrei Gromyko became a researcher and lecturer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Andrei Gromyko assumed his new job would be a permanent one, but in 1939 he was called upon by a Central Committee Commission which selected new personnel to work in diplomacy.

In early 1939, Andrei Gromyko started working for the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Andrei Gromyko became the Head of the Department of Americas and because of his position Andrei Gromyko met with United States ambassador to the Soviet Union Lawrence Steinhardt.

Andrei Gromyko had never been abroad before and, to get to the United States, he had to travel via airplane through Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to Genoa, Italy, where they boarded a ship to the United States.

Andrei Gromyko later wrote in his Memoirs that New York City was a good example on how humans, by the "means of wealth and technology are able to create something that is totally alien to our nature".

Andrei Gromyko further noticed the New York working districts which, in his own opinion, were proof of the inhumanity of capitalism and of the system's greed.

Andrei Gromyko met and consulted with most of the senior officers of the United States government during his first days and succeeded Maxim Litvinov as ambassador to the United States in 1943.

Andrei Gromyko was a Soviet delegate to the Tehran, Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

In 1943, the same year as the Tehran Conference, the USSR established diplomatic relations with Cuba and Andrei Gromyko was appointed the Soviet ambassador to Havana.

Andrei Gromyko claimed that the accusations brought against Roosevelt by American right-wingers, that he was a socialist sympathizer, were absurd.

Andrei Gromyko was appointed Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations in April 1946.

However, in the opinion of Andrei Gromyko, Lie became an active supporter of the "expansionist behaviour" of the United States and its "American aggressionist" policy.

Trygve's successor, Swede Dag Hammarskjold promoted what Andrei Gromyko saw as "anti-Soviet policies".

Andrei Gromyko often used the Soviet veto power in the early days of the United Nations.

Andrei Gromyko was appointed Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom at a June 1952 meeting with Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin.

Andrei Gromyko met with Winston Churchill in 1952 not to talk about current politics but nostalgically about World War II.

Andrei Gromyko met Churchill again in 1953 to talk about their experiences during World War II before returning to Russia when he was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Andrei Gromyko disliked both Ponomarev and the power sharing between the ID and the foreign ministry.

However, even in the midst of such political infighting, Andrei Gromyko presided over many key junctures in the Soviet Union's diplomacy throughout his tenure as Foreign Minister.

Andrei Gromyko affirmed to Mao that his proposal would never get the approval of the Soviet leadership.

Years later during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gromyko met US President John F Kennedy while acting under instructions from the current Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.

Andrei Gromyko defended his nation's actions, stating that the Soviet Union had every right to be present in Cuba, especially considering the fact that the United States had established their own missiles in Turkey.

In 1973, Andrei Gromyko was promoted to a full voting member of the Politburo, the Soviet Union's highest decision-making body.

However, Andrei Gromyko turned down Andropov's offer, believing Andropov would eventually take the office for himself.

Ever since being appointed Foreign Minister in February 1957, Andrei Gromyko never challenged the authority of those elected to lead the Soviet Union by the Central Committee.

Unimpressed by the new leader's feeble gasp of foreign relations and weak standing in the Politburo, Andrei Gromyko aggressively asserted control over Soviet diplomacy to the point of regularly interrupting and contradicting Chernenko in front of other world leaders.

In supporting Gorbachev, Andrei Gromyko knew that the influence he carried would be strong.

Andrei Gromyko held the office of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, literally head of state, which was largely ceremonial, and his influence in ruling circles diminished.

Andrei Gromyko believed that perestroika was about working for the construction of a socialist society and saw glasnost and perestroika as an attempt at making the USSR more democratic.

Andrei Gromyko was promptly defended as "a man respected by the people" in a note by an anonymous delegate.

Andrei Gromyko died on 2 July 1989, just 16 days before what would have been his 80th birthday, after being hospitalised for a vascular problem that was not further identified.

Andrei Gromyko's death was followed by a minute of silence at the Congress of People's Deputies to commemorate him.

Andrei Gromyko was offered a grave in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, but at the request of his family he was not buried near the Moscow Kremlin Wall but instead at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Andrei Gromyko's work influenced Soviet and Russian ambassadors such as Anatoly Dobrynin.

Andrei Gromyko has concealed a veritable treasure-trove from future generations and taken to the grave with him an inestimable knowledge of international connection between the historical events and major figures of his time, which only he could offer.