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Author : B. Pyadyshev
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Distinguished Worker of the Diplomatic Service
Viktor Mikhailovich Sukhodrev has passed away.
Nothing so changes everyone as the years, but differently for dif-
ferent people. For some, mercilessly; for others, mercifully. Vik-
tor, until the very last day, was a center of attraction for people
of the most diverse interests, occupations and passions. His
range of communication and friendship was astonishingly wide
- politicians and diplomats, artists and performers, art critics,
filmmakers and salon owners. But they all were certainly person-
alities.
Viktor Mikhailovich Sukhodrev received most favored treatment
from time and fate. He lived, no, rather flew through more than
eight decades of years, and he neither lost his talents nor his
friends and admirers on the long road of life. But he could not
live without his wife, Inga Dmitrievna, who left this world a few
months ago.
Viktor Sukhodrev was an almost legendary personality in Russian diplomacy. The childhood and
youth spent in England, among his English coevals, awarded him an invaluable prize: English as
the second mother tongue. However, there had yet to be the ability to use this wonderful gift. Viktor
used it to the maximum.
His interpreting was artistic, in a perfect literary language, if that is at all possible in politics. The
way he rendered standard language clichés made them colorful, more accurate and figurative.
After Khrushchev's departure from the political stage, Viktor Sukhodrev was as much in demand
with the new leadership. Fate threw him together with Leonid Brezhnev for a long time. As far as
I remember, not one of the major foreign tours of Brezhnev took place without.
USSR Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin also held him in great esteem. For example, Sukhodrev as his
interpreter was present at the historic 1966 Tashkent meeting, during which the Soviet premier tried,
and nearly succeeded, in reconciling the President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, and the Prime Minister
of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Less than a couple of years later, in April 1968, Kosygin and Ayub Khan met again, though this
time in Pakistan. Kosygin went to Pakistan on an official visit. So Sukhodrev flew too. I was also in
the delegation.
The appearance of the legendary Sukhodrev caused a furor.
Inga Dmitrievna and Viktor Mikhailovich Sukhodrev are buried together in the small village grave-
yard under the canopy of century-old trees not far from their home on Nikolina Hill, where they
spent the last 20 years of their happy life.
http://interaffairs.ru
In Memory of a Friend, Viktor Sukhodrev