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which Griboedov undertook. In 1818, he was
forced to leave St. Petersburg in connection with
a duel, and accepted a post in the Russian
embassy in Persia. During these years he com-
pleted
Woe from Wit
(1816-23), but the censors
did not allow its publication until 1833, four
years after his death. In 1828 he was appointed
ambassador to Persia. A promising literary and
diplomatic career was cut short the following
year when a crowd invaded the Russian embassy
in Tehran and killed all its occupants, including
Griboedov.
allowed to leave the Soviet Union with his wife
to visit their son in the United States but was
stripped of his citizenship soon afterward. He
spent his final years in the United States, a
human rights campaigner to the end.
Gromyko, Andrei Andreevich
(1909-1989)
diplomat, head of state
For almost three decades as foreign minister of
the USSR (1957-85), Gromyko was the forbid-
ding face of Soviet diplomacy, privately dubbed
by Westerners Mr. Nyet (Mr. No). He was born
to a peasant family in the village of Starye
Gromyki, located in present-day Belarus. He
joined the
COMMUNIST PARTY
as a student in
1931. An agricultural economist by training, he
began his studies at the Economics Institute in
Minsk but graduated from the Minsk School of
Agricultural Technology in 1936. He then joined
the staff of the journal
Voprosy Ekonomiki
(
Prob-
lems of Economics
) with the Institute of Economics
in Moscow. Like other talented, ambitious, well-
educated young Soviets of his generation,
Gromyko suddenly benefited from the Great
Purge that decimated the ranks of higher-level
party and state officials. In 1939 he was appointed
to head the American department of the USSR
People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (later
known as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). In
1943, with little previous background, he was
appointed ambassador to the United States, a
post he held until 1946. As such he led the Soviet
delegation to the Dumbarton Oaks conference in
Washington, D.C., held in 1944, which put in
place the foundation for the United Nations. In
1945, he attended the Yalta and Potsdam Con-
ferences. From 1946 to 1948, he headed the
Soviet Union's mission to the United Nations in
New York, returning to Moscow in 1949 to serve
as first deputy foreign minister. The final year of
STALIN
's life brought a brief demotion when he
was appointed ambassador to the United King-
dom in 1952, but after Stalin's death in 1953,
he returned to his post of first deputy foreign
Grigorenko, Petr (Petro) Grigorievich
(1907-1987)
general and activist
Like his fellow dissident Andrei
SAKHAROV
, Petr
Grigorenko provides an example of a member of
the Soviet elite who sacrificed his privileges and
endured official harassment to advocate human
rights causes. Grigorenko was born in the
Ukraine into a poor peasant family. He joined
the Komsomol in his youth and participated in
grain requisitioning expeditions during the
1920s. He later joined the Red Army and served
as a division commander during World War II.
After the war he lectured for many years at the
prestigious Frunze Military Academy in Mosc-
ow, and was promoted to major general in 1959.
In 1961, a speech highly critical of Stalinism at a
local party meeting resulted in his dismissal from
the academy, his loss of rank, and expulsion
from the party. He was sent to the Far East in
1963 and the following year imprisoned in a
psychiatric hospital, the new tool that the KGB
(secret police) was developing against dissenters.
He became a forceful advocate for the cause of
the Crimean Tatars, arguing for their right to
return to their historic homeland in the Crimea
after their mass deportation to Central Asia by
STALIN
in 1944, accused of pro-German sympa-
thies. For this he was arrested again in 1967 and
imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital. Grigorenko
became one of the founders of the Helsinki
monitoring group in Moscow. In 1977, he was
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