Aleksei Kosygin

By Henry Kissinger

Among our own experts Kosygin had the reputation of being more liberal than Brezhnev. I considered that a superficial judgment. As Prime Minister, he was in operational control of day-to-day activities of the Soviet government--outside of the security and foreign policy fields.

Inevitably, this produced a certain pragmatism. He could speak eloquently about the advantages of increased commerce with the United States, though he never failed to claim that he was doing us the greater favor by opening up the Soviet market to our exports. But outside the economic area, Kosygin struck me as orthodox if not rigid. It seemed almost as if he compensated for managerial pragmatism by the strictest piety on ideological matters.

Kosygin was clearly more polished and better educated than his colleagues. He had functioned at the upper reaches of Soviet power for more than 30 years. Brezhnev, for example, was still a middle-level party official when Kosygin had joined the top group of 20 or so Soviet leaders. On the other hand, Kosygin's capacity for survival may well have derived from the fact that he never aspired to the very summit of power. Successive leaders beginning with Stalin had valued his competence; none had seen him as a potential rival. His actions were not in service to personal ambition. His commitment to duty was vividly illustrated when his wife was fatally ill; Kosygin went ahead with his day's chores, even continuing to stand on Lenin's Tomb to review a Red Square parade after the message of her death reached him.

I saw little evidence of the sense of humor some of our experts had detected beneath the glacial exterior. Either my only attempt to strike a light tone backfired, or else Kosygin's humor was too subtle for me. At the end of the summit, we boarded a Soviet plane. To the considerable chagrin of our Soviet hosts, its engines refused to start. Kosygin stormed on the plane and said: "Tell us what you want to do with our Minister of Aviation. If you want him shot on the tarmac we will do so." He looked as if he might be serious. I attempted to ease his embarrassment by speaking of the wickedness of objects. When one dropped a coin, I said, it always rolled away, never toward one. Kosygin was not to be consoled by such transparent attempts to shift responsibility. "This is not my experience," he said, fixing me with a baleful glance. "I have dropped coins which rolled toward me."

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