HUNTING WITH BREZHNEV

By Henry Kissinger

On May 4, 1973, only four days after H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned as part of President Nixon's effort to put Watergate behind him, I was airborne for Moscow. At that time, Soviet-American relations were unusually free of tension. A summit between Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon was to take place in June on American soil; my few days in the Soviet Union in May were to prepare for it. On this trip I had a glimpse of Brezhnev that intrigues me to this day when I reflect on whether there can ever be a stable coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Upon arrival my colleagues and I were driven to Zavidovo, the Politburo hunting preserve--the Soviet Camp David--some 90 miles northeast of Moscow. This was intended as a great honor. No Western leader had ever been invited to Zavidovo; the only other foreigners to visit it, I was told, had been Tito and President Urho Kekkonen of Finland. Our hosts did their best to convey that good relations with the U.S. meant a great deal to them.

Was it a ruse to lull us while the Kremlin prepared a geopolitical offensive? Or were the Soviets sobered by Nixon's firmness into settling for restraint? Did they seek detente only as a tactical maneuver? Or was there a serious possibility for a long period of stability in U.S.-Soviet relations?

We can never know. Within twelve months both Nixon's capacity to oppose Soviet expansion and his authority to negotiate realistically had been undermined by Watergate. Whether our East-West policy was doomed in any event by the dynamics of the Soviet system or by the inherent ambiguity of our conception will be debated for a long time. The issue became moot when the Executive power in the U.S. collapsed.

The dominant impression from the visit was Brezhnev's insecurity about his forthcoming U.S. trip. Whatever Brezhnev's systems analysts might tell him of Moscow's emerging military parity, to him America seemed to be a land of superior technology and wondrous capacity, a country of marvelous efficiency compared to the cumbersome Soviet colossus. Brezhnev endlessly sought reassurance that he would be courteously received in America. I was touched by this insecurity.

During the Zavidovo visit, Brezhnev's vulnerability allowed a human contact that was not to recur. One afternoon I returned to my villa and found hunting attire, an elegant, military-looking olive drab, with high boots, for which I am unlikely to have any future use. Brezhnev, similarly attired, collected me in a jeep. I hate the killing of animals for sport, but Brezhnev said some wild boars had already been earmarked for me. Given my marksmanship, I replied, the cause of death would have to be heart failure. Still, I would be willing to go along as an adviser.

Deep in the stillness of the forest a stand had been built about halfway up a tree, with a crude bench and an aperture for shooting. All was still. Only Brezhnev's voice could be heard, whispering hunting tales: of his courage when a boar once attacked his jeep; of the bison that stuffed itself with the bait laid out for other animals and then fell contentedly asleep on the steps of the hunting stand, trapping Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovski in the tower above until a search party rescued him.

After Brezhnev felled a huge boar with a single shot, we moved to another stand even deeper in the forest. We remained there for some hours, and someone brought cold cuts, dark bread and beer from the jeep. Brezhnev's split personality--alternalively boastful and insecure, belligerent and mellow--was in plain view as we ate in that alfresco setting. The truculence appeared in his discussion of China. He spoke of his brother, who had worked there as an engineer before Khrushchev removed all Soviet advisers. He had found the Chinese treacherous, arrogant, beyond the human pale. They were cannibalistic in the way they destroyed their top leaders (an amazing comment from a man who had launched his career during Stalin's purges); they might well, in fact, be cannibals. Now China was acquiring a nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union could not accept this passively; something would have to be done. He did not say what.

Brezhnev was clearly fishing for some hint of American acquiescence in a Soviet pre-emptive attack. I gave no encouragement; my bland response was that the growth of China was one of those problems that underlined the importance of settling disputes peacefully. Brezhnev returned to his preoccupation. China's growing might was a menace to everybody. Any military assistance by the U.S. would lead to war. I warned that history proved America would not be indifferent to an attack on China. (The next day the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoli Dobrynin, stressed that the China portion of the discussion was not to be treated as social. Brezhnev had meant every word of it.)

Reflecting the duality of the national character and of his own personality, Brezhnev shifted suddenly from menace to sentimentality. He spoke of how his father had learned in World War I that peace was the noblest goal. Brezhnev agreed. He wanted to dedicate his tenure to making war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union unthinkable. Brezhnev reminisced about the human impact of World War II. He spoke gently, with none of the braggadocio so evident a few moments earlier.

Which was the real Brezhnev? The leader who spoke so threateningly of China or the old man who, with his slightly slurred and halting speech, recited his devotion to peace? Probably both were genuine. Was the peace of which he spoke only the stillness of Soviet hegemony, or an acceptance of coexistence? Again, almost surely both. The Bolshevik believed in the prevalence of material and military factors; the aged leader was exhausted by the exactions of a pitiless system. Doubtless, no more than any other Soviet leader would Brezhnev resist a chance to alter the power balance; nothing can relieve us of the imperative of preparedness. But within that constraint, some leaders, driven by the impossibility of suppressing human aspiration forever, may emerge who seek true coexistence. The West's policy must encompass simultaneously the two antiphonal trends of Soviet policy: resistance to expansionism and receptivity to a change of course in Moscow.

It is possible that the KGB suggested that Brezhnev raise these themes to display a human bond and pretend a sincere desire for peace. As a good Communist, Brezhnev was, of course, dedicated to the victory of his ideology; he could not justify failing to take advantage of a superior position of strength. It was then--and remains--our principal responsibility to prevent such temptations from arising. But there was also in Brezhnev a strain of the elemental Russia, of a people that longs for a surcease from its travails and has never been permitted to fulfill its dream.

The mellow mood of the evening in the hunting stand proved evanescent. Circumstances soon overwhelmed this single, brief glimpse of humanity that was not repeated while I was in office.

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