Georgy Korniyenko, 81; Soviet Official During Missile Crisis

Georgy Korniyenko, 81, who served at the Soviet Embassy in Washington during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and later was a deputy foreign minister, died Wednesday after a long illness, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Korniyenko joined the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1949. He was a councilor at the embassy in Washington during the missile crisis that put the two nations on the edge of nuclear war.

In 1964, he was named to head the ministry’s American desk.

Korniyenko was named deputy to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in 1975 and became his first deputy two years later. Korniyenko played an active role in crafting Soviet policy toward the United States and helped set the agenda for the U.S.-Soviet disarmament talks in the 1970s and ‘80s.

He sometimes clashed with other members of the Soviet elite on foreign policy issues.

When a Soviet fighter jet shot down a Korean airliner that intruded into Soviet airspace in 1983, killing all 269 people on board, Korniyenko opposed the official Kremlin course on the incident.

He vainly urged the Communist Party leadership to release more information about it to avoid international isolation. Korniyenko was also among the members of the nation’s leadership who opposed the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.