Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet Belarusian communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet . Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet or "Grim Grom", because of his frequent use of the Soviet veto in the United Nations Security Council.
Gromyko's political career started in 1939 with his employment at the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs . He became the Soviet ambassador to the United States in 1943, leaving in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Upon his return to the Soviet Union he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.
As the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Gromyko played a direct role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and later helped negotiate arms limitations treaties such as the ABM Treaty, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and SALT I & II, among others. Under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, Gromyko helped build the policy of détente between the US and the USSR. As Brezhnev's health declined during the last 7 years of his leadership, Gromyko formed a troika with KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov that increasingly dominated decision-making in Moscow. Henceforth, Gromyko's conservatism and hardline attitudes towards the West dictated the course of Soviet foreign policy until the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.
Following Gorbachev's election as General Secretary, Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister and was appointed to the largely ceremonial office of head of state. Subsequently, he retired from political life in 1988, and died the following year in Moscow.
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5. July 1909 – 2. July 1989
