Negative Neanderthaler

In the hushed halls of Lake Success, the customary conglomeration of diplomats, students, experts on everything, and housewives with nothing better to do had gathered for the 174th meeting of the United Nations Security Council. A matron in a garden party hat, who seemed to have materialized in plump perfection from a Helen Hokinson cartoon, roguishly asked a U.N. guard: "Is this the way to the Big Tent?" In one of the main conference chambers, a husky man with a mallet walked up to a side wall and started to hammer away. The four-inch cinder blocks crumbled under his blows. Soon a vast, vandalistic hole gaped in the wall.

The man with the mallet was not Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, as some wags suggested. He was a mason and he was making a new exit under orders from the U.N. fire marshal. But when he finished, there would be a new door for Gromyko to walk out of.

The Voice. All the forms of evasion and obstruction--from dilatory diatribes and procedural pettifoggery to the simple no and the plain walkout--were Andrei Gromyko's special assignments. As the Soviet Union's permanent representative on the Security Council, he was doing his job with maddening competence.

Gromyko (rhymes with Topeka) was the man who, even more than Harry Truman, had made Americans veto-conscious. There had been ten Russian vetoes in 14 months; no other power had ever vetoed the will of the Council majority. Two weeks ago came veto No. 11. The majority of U.N.'s Balkan Commission had reported that Greece's Communist neighbors were supporting Greece's Communist guerrillas. The U.S. proposed a border watch. Gromyko promptly vetoed it. Last week Gromyko got around to explaining his veto. His remarks were intended for gulliberals of the Henry Wallace school rather than for his Security Council' colleagues.

Around the horseshoe table, behind their national name plates, sat the guardians of peace. Their assistants clustered about them, attentively bent forward, ready to leap into any possible breaches with a saving statistic. Under the bluish-white fluorescent glow, Andrei Gromyko sat erect, somberly garbed as any banker, reading in that flat, husky voice which has been described by several American women as replete with sex appeal.

Andrei & the Wolf. Said Gromyko, in effect: the Greek Government is to blame for all the border troubles. Foreign military missions (meaning the U.S. and British) must be withdrawn. Foreign economic aid (meaning U.S.) must be subject to a commission that included Russia. Otherwise the situation would end in the servitude of Greece. (Later, Gromyko--who has conscientiously learned to speak excellent English even though he persists in speaking Russian most of the time--poked a pencil at the translator and said that he had meant "enslavement" and not "servitude.") Intervention by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania was a "myth. Intervention cannot be concealed in bushes." As usual, Gromyko dragged his listeners around the same point through interminable repetitions. His reasoning was pervaded by the sublimely simple conviction that the Communist dogma was The Truth and would prevail. He was surrounded by an intangible body of strangeness, as though he had come from another planet and carried a piece of its peculiar atmosphere with him.

Cried the U.S.'s Herschel Johnson: "So . . . the innocent little Slavic-Albanian brothers . . . are menaced by this wicked fascist Greek wolf. It is curious and almost like a fairy tale come to life." The councilors went through their paces like actors in a tediously familiar tragedy of manners. They voted down Gromyko, paragraph by paragraph, with only the pale hand of Poland's Oscar Lange raised with Gromyko's. Later Colombia suggested a compromise which called for the creation of a new, slightly modified Balkan Commission. Gromyko said the Colombia proposal was simply the old U.S. resolution with a "wash, a haircut, powder and lipstick."

Gromyko was among the first to leave, walking with his heavy, stiff shoulders carried high, head prodding forward, his face a stolid mask. Soviet car No. 1 drove up. The chauffeur smiled with a flash of stainless steel teeth, and Gromyko disappeared in a faint cloud of gasoline and mystery.

The Man Without a Face. To many a U.S. citizen, Andrei Gromyko had become almost a U.S. household nuisance. He was the closest visible embodiment of Russia's apocalyptic orneriness. He took walks on Fifth Avenue. He sat in the last row of the Trans-Lux theater, on Madison and 60th, taking in a newsreel. Fred Allen cracked jokes about him. And yet he was like a man without a face.

Little was known about his personal past. Russia's Cerberean censors withheld the barest biographical data. Recently, when a newsman who wanted to write a Gromyko profile asked his help, Gromyko snapped: "My personality does not interest me." One somewhat challenging fact is known: there are actually many Gromykos in the world.

Andrei was born in 1909 near Gomel in the small town of Gromyki, 90% of whose inhabitants are called Gromyko. He studied economics, got a master's degree in 1936, and lectured at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. In 1939, he was abruptly appointed head of the American section of the Russian Foreign Office, thence was sent into the thick of high & low diplomacy, as counselor at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. These were dangerous times, and Molotov. decided finally to keep the old-line, ex-Menshevik diplomats (Maisky, Troyanovsky Sr., Surits et al.) from further advancement, push a younger and more reliable set to the fore. Thus, in 1943, succeeding Western-minded Maxim Litvinoff, Gromyko walked into the Oval Room of the White House and presented his ambassadorial credentials to Franklin Roosevelt. Gromyko was then 34, and looked as though he could not tell a demarche from a dinner party. He was definitely something new in the world of diplomacy.

The Man Without Memories. Until Gromyko's entrance, a successful diplomat was a subtle, imaginative artist, who could improvise a stiff note to a fractious government as quickly as a compliment for a fat lady. But Gromyko behaves in chancelleries and council chambers with all the charm of a misanthropic robot. He is blunt, aloof, without imagination, without the right (or apparently the will) to independent thought. He refers every decision to Moscow. His diplomacy consists in executing Moscow's will to the letter, to the accompaniment of paraphrased Pravda editorials. He is assisted by Physics Professor Dmitri Vladimirovich Skobeltsin (Atomic Energy), Economist Alexander P. Morozov (ECOSOC) and Lieut. General Alexander P. Vasiliev (Military Staff Committee). Gromyko works as hard as any man on his team. "Oh," says Mme. Gromyko with a nice sense for the hierarchy of toil, "Andrei does work hard, yet not as hard as Mr. Vishinsky, and even that is not so hard as Mr. Molotov works."

Many U.N. diplomats understand that to classify Gromyko it is necessary to realize that he is not only a new statesman, but a prototype of a new race of men. In Darkness at Noon, writing of those bullheaded, bull-minded men who grew up under the Revolution's rod, Novelist Arthur Koestler described that new race:

". . . The generation which had started to think after the flood. It had no traditions, and no memories to bind it to the old. vanished world. It was a generation born without an umbilical cord . . . colorless, barren voice . . . never smiled . . . absolute humorlessness . . . without frivolity, without melancholy . . . generation of modern Neanderthalers. . . ."

The Yogi & the Commissar. Andrei Gromyko is an almost perfect neo-paleolithic specimen. When the Communist Party hacked its bloody way to power in 1917, Gromyko was eight years old. He, like millions with him and after him, never had a toy, a dream, a book or an ideal that was not somehow tinged by the penetrating hue of Communist dogma. That such men exist, that they occupy positions of power is one of the most important facts in today's world. Gromyko does not belong in the category of the commissars of the 1920s, who were far more imaginative and volatile. He is closer to the yogi type--a yogi in disciplined contemplation of a narrow cult.

Beneath such stark dedication, not much of common humanity is visible. Gromyko reads mostly books on economics, though he once admitted that he likes Lord Byron (because he had a "social consciousness"). Gromyko drinks little, eats moderately. He plays some chess, some volleyball. Muffled reports say that he collects stamps. His buxom wife, Lidiya. has borne him a son, Anatoli, 15, and a daughter, Emiliya, 9. Whatever time he can spare (which is not much), he spends with his family. The story goes that when a newsman once called his home, Gromyko's daughter answered the telephone. The newsman asked to speak to her father. Emiliya: "He is not here." Newsman: "Do you know where he is?" Emiliya: "No--I never know where he is; he never tells me anything."

Gromyko lives in the 40-room mansion built by the late Ogden L. Mills at Woodbury, L.I. It is hidden behind high walls and 182 landscaped acres (including a superb 17th Century-style formal garden).

It's a Joke, Ma'am. This week, in a limited gesture of good will, Gromyko took time out from a busy week to answer, in part, a list of written questions. These facts about him were revealed:

Gromyko's day usually begins at 9 a.m. and ends after midnight. At breakfast he likes to read various morning newspapers. Among his literary favorites he includes, in addition to Russian classics, Hugo. Balzac, Goethe, Shakespeare, Mark Twain. His favorite U.S. movies include Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, Abe Lincoln in Illinois. His father was a farmer. He has a brother and a sister living in Gomel. He met his wife in college, in Minsk.

Recently Gromyko discovered that his labored and pragmatic sense of humor makes good copy for him. Sample Gromykoisms:

Commenting on an article about him in the New York Times: "Well, about half is true and half is false. Since the Times is a balanced newspaper, that is to be expected."

Hearing remarks on his youth: "How old does a man have to be in America to be old?"

Yet Gromyko rarely smiles. At a dinner party, Mrs. Roger Lapham (wife of San Francisco's mayor) asked him: "What do you think of American women?" Gromyko's answer: "I am not impressed." The lady was about to turn her back on him when he explained: "Mrs. Lapham, it is a joke."

What the Thunder Said. Gromyko is a success. A U.N. diplomat calls him "one of Molotov's pet chickens." Russian newspapers nowadays report at length what and how Gromyko "thundered" in the Security Council (Grom means thunder in Russian). The papers used to print the thunderer's name in small 7-pt. type, but things changed after his first vetoes. By the eighth, his name had grown to 14-pt. headlines; then it went to 18-pt. and after the tenth to 27-pt. (which, for Russia, is the works). Nevertheless, the Russian press still does not run his picture.

Gromyko shows no indications of tiring of his U.N. routine. In fact, he is putting on weight.

"Morbid Fantasy." The Greek dispute was the most difficult (and potentially the most dangerous) problem for Gromyko and U.N. It was also quite a problem for the Greeks. Last week came new reports about the Communist International Brigade (which Gromyko dismissed as a mere "morbid fantasy"). Estimates of its strength ran from 5,000 to 50,000 men. A recruiting drive is going on in Western Europe as well as the Balkans.

Guerrilla warfare in Greece's north continued. A high-ranking U.S. officer in Greece last week declared that there was merely a lull in the fighting. Terror still littered the countryside: last week, a picture from Yanina, in Epirus, showed two guerrillas identifying the severed heads of fellow guerrillas recently killed near the Albanian frontier. One of Greece's gravest shortages being transportation, the bodies were left behind.

Athens, outwardly calm and even prosperous, was gripped by growing uneasiness. Late into the night, Athenians crowded open-air cafes, sipping Turkish coffee and talking about the still-falling drachma, the bad Government, the bad opposition, all the daily disasters. Few bothered to talk about U.N. Said one of them: "First we believed U.N. would end power politics. Now nobody is satisfied. The left feels that the Greek question is an internal problem, but U.N. disagrees. The right feels that the Greek question is an international problem, but Gromyko disagrees."

History's verdict on U.N. was still in the jury room, but a lot of the world's people were discouraged by what Gromyko's veto had done to it. Said a disabled veteran in Berlin: "The U.N. is a Punch & Judy show. The Americans ought to hit the Russians over the head, finally."

The Keynote. Yet an air of solid habit had begun to pervade U.N.'s halls. Faces grew familiar. Delegates had learned their way to conference rooms, bars and washrooms. Recently, when an ultra-orthodox Moslem member of the Egyptian delegation spread his prayer rug just off the press bar, nobody paid any attention (except a helpful British journalist who told the Moslem which way was east).

If nothing else, U.N. kept busy.

P: ECOSOC (Economic & Social Council) was riding off in all directions. Its Narcotic Drugs Commission discussed the establishment of a commission to investigate the effects of the coca leaf-chewing habit, prevalent in some Latin American countries. Its Committee on One Day's Pay Proposal was proposing a committee to propose that all the world's citizens donate one day's pay for needy mothers & children. ECOSOC has 17 other commissions and subcommissions.

P: UNSCOP (Palestine Commission) was holding closed meetings in Geneva.

P: WHO (World Health Organization) was trying to be born, formally.

P: UNESCO (designed to achieve peace by its influence on the minds of men) studied the jungles of the Amazon basin and other interesting matters.

P: The Security Council Membership Committee was considering applications for admission by Eire, Portugal, Trans-Jordan, Italy and Austria (Russia was prepared to blackball all of them) and Albania, Outer Mongolia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria (which would run into U.S. opposition). The only prospective member nobody wanted to sandbag was Yemen.

P: The Security Council itself, apart from its performance on Greece, registered one achievement: following its stern injunction, the Dutch and Indonesians have concluded a truce (TIME, Aug. n) and the Indonesians announced they were ready to abide by a U.N. decision. The Security Council had been able to agree on action only because no primary Russian interest was involved.

The keynote as U.N. entered its third year was struck by Secretary-General Trygve Lie who last week issued his annual statement on the state of the United Nations. The keynote was a gloomy kind of optimism:

"The world political situation has not improved. ... [But] I am convinced that no responsible statesman in any country can, or does, contemplate the prospect of war." For the immediate future Lie was probably right; but Lake Success was haunted by the fear that a fateful day would come when Andrei Gromyko, the Neanderthal diplomat, would hunch his shoulders and follow his bulbous nose out of a door for the last time.

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