Foreign Relations: New Man from Moscow

Soviet Russia's ambassadors to the U.S. have a fine talent for adapting to the Kremlin's mood of the moment. Alexander Troyanovsky, the first (1934-39), was squat and jolly, symbolizing an era when the two nations resumed relations after a 16-year lapse.* But as suspicions and ill-feeling grew between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and Communist intriguing spread throughout the hemisphere, Constantine Oumansky, a schemer and conniver, took over. Then, in the critical years of World War II, when Russia desperately needed U.S. help, grandfatherly Maxim Litvinov became ambassador. He was pro-Western, cooperative and eager to please—as befitted the envoy of an embattled ally. But as the tide of victory turned, Litvinov was supplanted by the dour Andrei Gromyko, and as the cold war worsened, Gromyko and his successors were progressively frosty.

Then, in 1959, the cold war thawed a bit, and along came Mikhail Alekseevich Menshikov. Urbane and nattily dressed, "Smiling Mike" impressed and puzzled Washington with his molar-showing cordiality. Menshikov was all smiles until the U-2 dustup. Then the Russian Ambassador simply vanished from the Washington scene for a while. After the Kennedy in auguration he reappeared, smiling as usual, but in recent months his grin seemed to be wearing thin.

This week Menshikov will leave Washington, to be replaced by Anatoly F. Dobrynin, a skilled diplomat and an old U.S. hand. Dobrynin, a protégé of Gromyko's, was in the Soviet embassy in Washington for three years (11952-55) and served one year as minister-counselor. After returning to Russia, he went to the United Nations as under secretary to the late Dag Hammarskjold — and the highest ranking Russian on the U.N. staff. In 1960, he returned to Moscow, where he took charge of the American desk of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. A tall Ukrainian with receding, slightly greying hair, Dobrynin, 42, will be the first Soviet envoy to the U.S. who was born after the Russian revolution; in the youthful climate of present-day Washington, he should fit in well as a liudi novykh granits — or Soviet-style New Frontiersman.