Andrei Gromyko

Soviet diplomat

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Lived 1909–1989, aged 80

Wikipedia
66 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1909–1989
Aged 80
Known for
Crimean Conference
1945

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

The man who said no for nearly three decades. Andrei Gromyko wielded the Soviet veto so often at the UN that Western reporters dubbed him "Mr. Nyet" — and he carried that iron refusal through every Cold War flashpoint from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the threshold of glasnost.

Biography

About

Gromyko entered Soviet diplomacy in 1939 and became ambassador to the United States by 1943, then the USSR's permanent UN representative in 1946. After a stint as ambassador to Britain in 1952, he rose to Foreign Minister in 1957 and held the post for twenty-eight years. He sat across from Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis, brokered the end of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, and negotiated the détente treaties — the ABM, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban, SALT I and II. As Brezhnev weakened in the mid-1970s, Gromyko assumed real control of Soviet policy alongside Ustinov and Andropov. He remai…

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