Eyes, Ears and Stomach

By Hugh Sidey

By one estimate, Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin, 64, has performed rites over the carcasses of 2,500 cold salmon sacrificed in the search for world brotherhood. The salmon were nibbled into oblivion, but Dobrynin goes on, a monument to cunning and a thoroughly disciplined alimentary canal.

Last week the U.S.S.R.'s Ambassador sat at Ronald Reagan's dinner table. Then, in 48 hours, he was headed back to Moscow carrying his impression of the President and some private U.S. messages to his Soviet bosses, urging talks on the subjects of superpower tension. At the White House, during a dinner for the diplomatic corps, Dobrynin was served some of Bob Herdman's boneless strip sirloin barbecue, pinquito beans, salsa, marinated artichoke hearts and toasted, buttered sourdough bread. Dobrynin got an all-American message: good fellowship with peppers.

The Ambassador has been in Washington for 22 years. His double chin has redoubled, his hair turned white. He has lived through four Soviet chiefs and six U.S. Presidents. Reagan 'planned his barbecue for the capital's diplomats long ago. As so often happens in statecraft, the event was seized as a device through which Reagan might send a message of sincerity to the Kremlin. In a way, Dobrynin is being tested. Does he have any clout in Moscow now? Does he even know who is in charge there?

In the old days Dobrynin could sometimes get 24-hour turnaround messages straight from Leonid Brezhnev. He had a private phone line from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a special parking place in the State Department's basement. All that stopped with Reagan's Administration. Dobrynin now goes in the State Department's public entrance. And so cold are U.S.-Soviet relations that it matters less whether Dobrynin has the instant ear of the Politburo.

Dobrynin broke in under John Kennedy. The Ambassador attended the famous meeting where Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko lied to J.F.K. about missiles in Cuba. Dobrynin survived because U.S. officials concluded he had not known about the missiles either. His sense of humor carried him through tough times. Eyeing a new Washington building with huge glass columns, he cracked: "Aha, that's where you are going to put your MX missiles." He jokes about being the man from the "evil empire." Dobrynin is, by one White House aide's account, the only Ambassador who "can talk, eat, laugh and listen at the same time."

Just as Dobrynin measures Presidents, so do Presidents measure Moscow by him. He gets remote when Moscow gets remote. He grows silent when the Kremlin gets confused. He gets tough when the Politburo gets angry. Back during the 1973 Middle East war, he was as cold and hard as an iceberg while the Soviets seemed to be planning to intervene. Within a few hours after the U.S. went on military alert and threatened confrontation, he was laughing about the whole misunderstanding.

At the barbecue last week Dobrynin was drawn aside in the Green Room by Secretary of State George Shultz, who underscored the seriousness of Reagan's offer to talk on almost anything at any time. Reagan also made these points, but the dinner conversation was designed more to show Reagan's good will. Dobrynin was headed for vacation, and is remodeling his dacha in the countryside west of Moscow. Reagan, axman and chain-saw artist, understands the problems and the joys of keeping a country place. The two men gestured animatedly, laughed, frowned and looked each other in the eye. Dobrynin's chins may even have grown a mite from the Tom's Mom's chocolate-chip cookies. It remains to be seen whether the way to the Kremlin's mind begins with Dobrynin's appetite and amusement.