Anatoly Dobrynin

Anatoly Dobrynin Анатолий Добрынин
Anatoly Dobrynin on 23 June 1967
Head of the International Department of the Central Committee
In office 6 March 1986 – 30 September 1988
Preceded by	Boris Ponomarev
Succeeded by	Valentin Falin
Ambassador of the Soviet Union to the United States
In office 4 January 1962 – 19 May 1986
Preceded by	Mikhail Menshikov
Succeeded by	Yuri Dubinin
Member of the 27th Secretariat
In office 6 March 1986 – 30 September 1988
Full member of the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th Central Committee
In office 9 April 1971 – 14 July 1990
Candidate member of the 23rd Central Committee
In office 8 April 1966 – 9 April 1971
Personal details
Born	Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin (1919-11-16)16 November 1919 Krasnaya Gorka, Mozhaisk Uyezd, Moscow Governorate, Russian SFSR
Died	6 April 2010(2010-04-06) (aged 90) Moscow, Russia
Alma mater	Diplomat
Profession	Civil servant, politician

Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin (Russian: Анатолий Фёдорович Добрынин, 16 November 1919 – 6 April 2010) was a Russian statesman and a Soviet diplomat and politician. He was Soviet Ambassador to the United States for over two decades, from 1962 to 1986.

He attracted notoriety among the American public during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the beginning of his ambassadorship, when he denied the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba although, unbeknownst to him until days later, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had already sent them and the Americans already had photographs of them. Between 1968 and 1974, he was known as the Soviet end of the Kissinger–Dobrynin back channel of direct communication and negotiation between the American presidency and the Soviet politburo.

Dobrynin was born in the village of Krasnaya Gorka, near Mozhaisk in the Moscow Oblast, on 16 November 1919. His father was a locksmith. He attended the Moscow Aviation Institute and after graduation went to work for the Yakovlev Design Bureau. He entered the Higher Diplomatic School in 1944 and graduated with distinction.

Dobrynin joined the diplomatic service of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1946. He later joined the secretariat of the ministry, working for Molotov, Shepilov, Gromyko and Zorin. He was appointed deputy secretary general at the United Nations in 1957 and returned to Moscow as head of the foreign ministry's department of the United States and Canada in 1960. Dobrynin was appointed as Soviet Ambassador to the United States in 1962. His tenure lasted until 1986.