55. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Call on The President by Ambassador Dobrynin
PARTICIPANTS
- The President
- Llewellyn E. Thompson, Ambassador-at-Large, Department of State
- Ambassador Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, USSR
The Ambassador said he had asked to come in under instructions to inform the President of the governmental changes which had been made in the Soviet Union. He read a statement that was virtually identical with the TASS statement announcing the new appointments and the resignation of Khrushchev.2
Speaking without notes, the Ambassador went on to say that he had been instructed to inform the President that the general foreign policy of the Soviet Union had been set forth by the Twentieth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-second Party Congresses and that this policy remained unchanged. He said that the Soviet Government would, in the future, adhere steadfastly to this course. He said that this meant the pursuit of peaceful coexistence and the relaxation of tensions. The Ambassador said that the Soviet Government would seek the peaceful settlement of current problems and would continue its efforts to achieve disarmament and to strengthen the United Nations. He said that the Soviet Government counted on other governments to show respect for the sovereignty and independence of other nations.
The President expressed his appreciation for this personal report. He said it was his aim to achieve better understanding with all nations. He said that the quest for peace by this Government had never been more determined than it was now. The President said that there was always some concern when there were changes in governments, but he was not as excited or alarmed as the Soviets probably would be if [Page 128] we had a change of government here in January. He said he looked forward to seeing more of the Ambassador and appreciated the fact that relations with him had always been based on candor and friendliness. He felt that he could speak frankly to the Ambassador and thought that the Ambassador felt the same way.
The President referred to the death of our beloved President Kennedy who had been doing all he could in seeking peace and pointed out that he had continued the same course. Mr. Khrushchev’s resignation for reasons of health was not as great a shock as had been the death of our President, but he hoped that the Soviets would maintain the same continuity of a peaceful policy. If the President had another term, perhaps we could make progress on the objective of easing tensions in the field of disarmament and in turning down our military activities. He said he wished to make clear that we don’t want to bury the Soviet Union but, on the other hand, we were not going to be buried by them. The President thought there was no reason for us to be frightened of each other. He was prepared to go to bed in the same room with the Ambassador without a pistol, and thought the Ambassador felt the same way. The problem was how to get our peoples to understand this.
The President quoted Charles Lamb, who, after reading a book, threw the book down and said, “I don’t like that man.” When he was asked if he knew the author, he said he did not and that if he did, he would probably like him. The President said in his experience in Government, he had often felt the same way about people but when he got to know them, he usually found his assumptions about them had been in error. The President wanted to meet the needs of our people rather than spend our money on military preparedness. He referred to the hot line and the Test Ban and stressed the importance of getting away from old antagonisms. Perhaps the Soviet Union could lead us to a more blessed world. The President said his guard was up, but his hand was out.
The President said he would like to stress to the Ambassador two words. The first of these was “peace.” In this country we had many things to do rather than make bombs. We needed more schools, hospitals, and roads, and he did not like spending fifty billion dollars a year in preparing to destroy somebody. Our mission was peace.
The President said the second word he wished to stress was flexibility. He told the Ambassador the story of the experience he had as a young Congressman when in a public meeting he had been unable to get the representative of a power company to do what the people wanted and had finally lost his temper and told the man to go to hell. He said everyone had applauded except one old man who was a lawyer. This man took him aside and pointed out that it was one thing [Page 129] to tell a man to go to hell and a different one to make him go there. The man said he had spent two months getting this particular meeting organized and that it had been destroyed in two minutes. It was necessary to be flexible. The President said he had told Chancellor Erhard that Adenauer had given him the impression that the Communists would eat him up before breakfast, but that he was not scared about this. He said he had told Chancellor Erhard that in determining his policy he should endeavor to put himself into the Soviet shoes and to examine what their concerns were.
The President then referred to the missile crisis in Cuba and said that at that time neither side knew what would happen. It was an embarrassing business for both sides; for us because of the presence of these missiles so near to us, and for the Soviets because they were obliged to remove them. The point, however, was that in this situation we had been a little flexible and, for that matter, so had the Soviets. The President did not question that the Soviets wanted peace as we did, but we both had problems. The Soviets would have to bend a little bit and so would we.
The President said he had been proud when the Soviets had their recent success in space. It was true that we were competitive people and he would have liked to have achieved this first, but he looked on such things as this as being for the benefit of mankind. He said we were not going to be provocative and he was not going to try to be elected on the basis of denouncing the Soviet Union. He thought our system was best and he knew that the Ambassador thought their system was best. We could not see everything alike and he pointed out that every man did not want the same woman for a wife, some liked blondes, some liked brunettes, and some redheads.
The President said that the Soviet Union had the capacity to kill a hundred million Americans and we had the capacity to kill a hundred million Russians, but this was not what he wanted to do. The President referred to his early experiences as a young man when he had to work with his hands and feet, but what he wanted to do now was to use his heart and head. The President said that if Goldwater won the election, we would perhaps have to try to calm him down, but the important thing was that the American people wanted peace. The President said that in his travels around the country whenever he talked about peace and the Test Ban, he had a wonderful response from his audiences. While he had no doubt about Soviet desire for peace, he had some doubts about their flexibility. He referred to the problem of the United Nations and said that some way must be found to deal with this problem. The President said he was willing to go anywhere and talk to anyone if this would be fruitful. The President said that the remarks he was making to the Ambassador represented his genuine feelings; they [Page 130] were not the result of any briefing, but said that the things he had been saying represented the views of his advisers and he mentioned Secretaries Rusk and McNamara, Mr. Bundy, and Ambassador Thompson.
Ambassador Dobrynin said that people everywhere wanted peace.
The President agreed and, referring to recent public opinion polls on the election, said that his lead over Goldwater was higher with women than with men because women particularly wanted peace. He urged Ambassador Dobrynin to inform the new Government of these frank statements of his views. He said he would not be a push-over but he had had all the shooting he wanted and referred to his wartime experiences. When our destroyer had been shot at in the Gulf of Tonkin, we had responded, but had done so responsibly. We could not allow ourselves to be shot at on the high seas. The President said a good many people wanted him to go north in Viet-Nam and he mentioned Nixon, Rockefeller, and other Republican leaders and said there were some in his own Party. What the President wanted in Viet-Nam, however, was for the people there to be left in peace. We wanted to get out but he would not turn these people over to someone attempting to dominate them by force. The independence of this area was our aim and he thought this was what we had agreed to. He said he thought the Soviets had even greater problems than we with the trouble-makers in this area.
In conclusion, the President said there were many changes taking place. There was apparently a new British Government now, a new Soviet Government, and the German Government was fairly new. He supposed that in time there would be new leadership in France and perhaps even in the United States, but in the United States we were following a policy of peace and flexibility and would continue to do so. He would be glad to see or talk to the Ambassador at any time that he had problems and he looked forward, after the election if he were returned, to getting on to making progress along the lines he had indicated.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Bundy Files, Memos of Conversation. Secret. Drafted and initialed by Thompson. The time of the meeting is from the President’s Daily Diary. (Ibid.) For the President’s brief account of the conversation, see The Vantage Point, p. 469. For Dobrynin’s account, see In Confidence, pp. 128–129. A summary of the conversation was transmitted to Moscow in telegram 1131, October 16 at 6:59 p.m. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, POL 15 USSR)↩
- For text of the TASS statement, October 16, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1964, p. 644.↩