Reminiscing on the Dartmouth Conference

by Yevgeny Primakov

At the peak of the Cold War, the Dartmouth Conference was one of the few diversions from the spirit of hostility available to Soviet and American intellectuals, who were keen, and able, to explore peace­making initiatives. In fact, the Dartmouth participants reported to Moscow and Washington on the progress of their discussion and, from time to time, were even instructed to "test the water" regarding ideas put forward by their gov­ernments. The Dartmouth meetings were also used to unfetter actions under­taken by the two countries from a propagandist connotation and present them in a more genuine perspective. But the crucial mission for these meetings was to establish areas of concurring interests and to attempt to outline mutually acceptable solutions to the most acute problems: nuclear weapons reduction, international conflict resolution, and facilitating conditions conducive to economic interaction.

The significance of the Dartmouth Confer­ence relates to the fact that throughout the cold war, no formal Soviet-American contact had been consistently maintained, and that huge gap was bridged by these meetings.

The composition of participants was a pri­mary factor in the success of those meetings, and it took some time before the negotiating teams were shaped the right way. At first, in the early 1970s, the teams had been led by professionally quali­fied citizens. From the Soviet Union, political experts and researchers working for the Insti­tute of World Economy and International Relations and the Institute of U.S. and Cana­dian Studies, organizations closely linked to Soviet policymaking circles, played key roles. For the United States, the team was made up of political scientists; prominent bankers and businessmen; and former senior officers of the State Department, the Pentagon, the U.S. government, and the CIA. For a long time, the American team was headed by David Rockefeller, with whom I developed a warm relationship. The Soviet team was originally headed by Nikolay Inozemtsev and then by Georgy Arbatov. Vitaly Zhurkin, Mikhail Milstein, and Grigory Morozov were exten­sively involved. I and my counterpart, Harold Sounders, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, were cochairs of the specialized Regional Conflicts Task Force.

It should be noted that we achieved considerable progress in designing measures to normalize the situation in the Middle East. And all of our suggestions were com­municated to the very "top." Much to my regret, due to external and internal reasons, our recommendations were never translated into action. The U.S.-U.S.S.R./Russian collaboration seeking to resolve the Middle East conflict did not yield any fruit even after the cold war was over. The ensuing monopolization of the mediation mission by the United States proved to be ineffective, as was explicitly demonstrated by the failure of the Middle East policies pursued by George W. Bush. I tend to believe that my Dartmouth colleague and friend Hal Sounders — a brilliant expert on international affairs – would share the view that integrat­ing efforts by the United States and Russia could be of paramount importance in putting an end to the inveterate Arab-Israeli enmity. This is especially so, if we consider the rise of Iran in the region, a consequence of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The Dartmouth Conference was also valuable in that it contributed to the growing human affinity and the forging of friendships, so difficult to imagine at that time. Let me share a story that was an unusual occurrence during that period, when an ideological wall had been erected between our two countries.

In 1974, when planning the meeting that was to be held in Tbilisi, our team wanted to invite the Americans to visit a Georgian family. We asked for and gained permission from Eduard Shevardnadze, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia. I suggested dinner at the apartment of my wife's relative – Nadezhda Kharadze. A professor of the Conservatory and a former prima donna of the Tbilisi Opera Theatre, she lived modestly, like most members of the Geor­gian intelligentsia. Nadezhda had to borrow a table and chairs from her neighbors, and as a result, all residents in the building knew that she was expecting Rockefeller himself to be one of her guests. On that evening, the party also included former Senator Hugh Scott, who had proposed the impeachment of President Nixon; Scott's wife; former U.S. representative to the U.N., Charles Yost; and editor-in-chief o/Time magazine, Hedley Donovan.

Nadezhda's apartment was on the fourth floor. Municipal authorities had no time to paint the walls inside the stairwell by the time of our arrival, so they thought better of it and instead unscrewed all the light bulbs. Because there was no elevator in the building, we walked up the stairs in darkness, yet, on each floor there was a source of light – just like in Italian movies, every apartment door opened as we passed by and we were scrutinized in silence.

The party was a lot of fun. We enjoyed splendid Georgian dishes and sang Russian, Georgian, and American songs. David Rockefeller rescheduled his return flight on his private jet and left with everyone else at three o'clock in the morning. He even offered dishwashing assistance to the hostess. Later, on multiple occasions, he told me that he never forgot that evening, although initially he underestimated the sincerity of the hosts, thinking, perhaps, that everything had been just another instance of a Potemkin Village scenario. I remember that he approached Ernest Hemingway's portrait, which was hanging above my nephew Sandrik's desk, and looked behind the frame to make sure that the spot behind it was not sun-bleached — evidence that the portrait was not hung with the single purpose of impressing him.

In Tbilisi, David Rockefeller enjoyed tremendous popularity. Ted Kennedy, who stayed in the Georgian capital with our group, complained that whenever he appeared in the streets, the boys would always cry out: "Hello to Rockefeller I"

Meeting and working with my American colleagues at the Dartmouth Conference is one of the best memories of my life.

Dr. Yevgeny Primakov is president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and was Russia's foreign minister from 1996 to 1998 and prime minister from 1998 to 1999.