Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich, << grah MYEE kuh, ahn DRAY ahn DRAY yuh vihch >> (1909-1989), was an important official of the Soviet Union for many years. He served as the country’s foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. In 1985, Eduard Shevardnadze replaced him as foreign minister, and Gromyko was appointed chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was then a largely ceremonial post. In 1973, Gromyko had become a member of the Politburo, the policymaking body of the Soviet Communist Party. He retired from his posts in 1988.
Gromyko, the son of peasant parents, was born near Minsk on July 18, 1909. He joined the Soviet diplomatic service in 1939. He was Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1943 to 1946. In 1944, he headed the Soviet delegation to the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, D.C., that helped create the United Nations (UN). Starting in 1946, he was chief Soviet delegate at the UN and at many international conferences. He became known for his role in difficult negotiations with the Western powers. He was deputy foreign minister from 1947 to 1952 and from 1953 to 1957, with a brief term as ambassador to the United Kingdom in between. He became a full member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 1956 and of the Politburo in 1973.
As foreign minister, Gromyko went with Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to the United States in 1959. In 1961, Gromyko took part in a meeting between Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy in Vienna, Austria. Gromyko headed the Soviet negotiating team that arranged a partial nuclear test ban treaty with the United Kingdom and the United States in Moscow in 1963. He died on July 2, 1989.
