The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

“Okay, let’s discuss this situation tête-à-tête,” Taraki responded seriously.Another cable, describing this episode, signed by Ivanov, Bogdanov, and Osadchiy,went to the Center.***Unlike Bogdanov and Osadchiy, who were permitted to leave Kabul only underexceptional circumstances, General Ivanov traveled to Moscow quite frequently. Not onlycould Ivanov travel to Moscow, he was also included in the official Soviet delegation to thesummit meeting with President Jimmy Carter in Vienna. Vienna was the site of the summitwhere the important arms control treaty SALT II was to be signed.According to protocol, the treaty signing ceremony was supposed to take place inWashington because U.S. Presidents Nixon and Ford had previously visited the USSR twotimes in a row. It was therefore Brezhnev’s turn to fly across the ocean. However, hisdoctors objected to such a journey because of the general secretary’s poor health. Afterlengthy consultations, a mutual agreement was finally reached to meet in Vienna.The Soviet delegation arrived in the capital of Austria by train. The delegation wasled by Brezhnev and three other senior members of the Politburo: Gromyko, Ustinov, andChernenko. Boris Semyonovich Ivanov, officially listed as the Ministry of Foreign Affairsexpert at the rank of adviser, was the KGB point man in the delegation.Ivanov was present at almost all stages of the negotiations, which lasted for severaldays and were finalized by the signing of the SALT II Treaty. The deterioration ofBrezhnev’s health was very obvious to everyone. Ivanov noticed with anxiety that thegeneral secretary could not maintain even a basic dialogue on his own with the president ofthe United States. All of the speeches that Brezhnev read were typed in large font on a437