A Byzantine Mystery: What Happened to Anatoly Dobrynin?

In all of the hullabaloo about Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reorganization of the top echelons of the Soviet Communist Party, perhaps the most puzzling aspect is the abrupt dismissal of Anatoly Dobrynin.

Dobrynin, for more than 20 years the Soviet ambassador to the United States, returned to Moscow three years ago to become chief of the international department of the Central Committee. As such he was the top adviser on foreign policy, especially on U.S.-Soviet relations.

Under Dobrynin, the international department was built up to a point where it, rather than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was the main instrument in Soviet foreign-policy formulation. He brought to it, also, the ministry’s leading experts on American affairs, most of whom had served under him in the United States.

Incredibly, it is almost certain that Dobrynin did not know that he was going to be dismissed until the actual meeting of the Central Committee on Sept. 30. The evening before, I met with Dobrynin in his office at the Central Committee. For more than an hour we discussed Soviet foreign policy in general and especially U.S.-Soviet relations--past, present and future--as well as Soviet internal developments. As always, he expressed full and enthusiastic support for Gorbachev.

There was not the slightest hint in Dobrynin’s demeanor, or in anything he said, that indicated he knew he was going to be fired the next day. On the contrary, it seems clear that leaving his post was the furthest thing from his mind.

Nearly everyone in Moscow expected Andrei A. Gromyko’s retirement as chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, so as to make way for Gorbachev to take the job. But everyone to whom I talked after the Central Committee plenum expressed astonishment and bafflement about Dobrynin. Wholly aside from the harsh way his dismissal was accomplished, the question posed by everybody was: Why? Dobrynin was a strong supporter of Gorbachev, who had appointed him to his Central Committee position in the first place. It was generally acknowledged that he was the major architect of Soviet policies that resulted in such a dramatic improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations. Certainly he understood the United States better than anyone else in the Kremlin. And as far as anybody knew, he had a good relationship with Alexander N. Yakovlev, who replaced him as the top Kremlin man on foreign policy.

It seems unlikely that Dobrynin’s removal presages any major changes in Soviet policies toward the United States. And yet questions do arise. Yakovlev, a former Soviet ambassador to Canada, had become the closest overall adviser to Gorbachev. If not the originator, he was a key advocate of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign-policy matters. But, also, Yakovlev’s foreign-policy views have a certain ambiguity. Just before his appointment three years ago to the Central Committee secretariat and to the Politburo, Yakovlev published a book titled “From Truman to Reagan.” Its central theme was that anti-Soviet views were so pervasive in the United States that it was impossible to have close friendly relations with Washington, no matter who was President or which party was in power. The disparity between this thesis and actual Soviet policies of the last two years has never been explained.

The shake-up of the Central Committee apparatus appears to strengthen Gorbachev’s position generally. But Dobrynin’s ouster was no contribution to that end. As a member of the Politburo and closer personally to Gorbachev, Yakovlev was clearly in a stronger political position than Dobrynin. It is quite possible that Yakovlev wanted for himself the top foreign-policy job in the Central Committee and, as a result, Dobrynin had to go. Yet the restructuring of the Central Committee apparatus accompanying the personnel changes does not indicate that the new international affairs “commission” that supersedes Dobrynin’s “department” will play a more active role in setting foreign policy. If anything, with the rise of Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign ministry may well regain its former leading role in this field.

The arcane politics of Kremlinology are often difficult to understand, glasnost or not. But seldom if ever have these Byzantine aspects been more baffling than in the case of Dobrynin’s abrupt and unexplained dismissal.