344. Editorial Note

Henry Kissinger met with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin on July 29, 1971, in the White House. The memorandum of conversation reads in part:

“I opened the meeting by informing Dobrynin of the decisions with respect to the foundry for the Kama River Project. I told him that the decision had been favorable and amounted to about $170 million. Dobrynin asked what that meant for the rest of the Kama River Project, and I replied that we needed another four to six weeks to make up our mind. Dobrynin then said, in the usual ungenerous Soviet way, that he hoped we realized the foundry had already been taken for granted in Moscow. I said that that was their problem; my problem was to inform them of the decisions we had made, and considering that it was a unilateral American gesture for which we didn’t ask reciprocity, it didn’t make any difference whether it had been taken for granted or not. Dobrynin then changed tack and rather effusively thanked us for the very positive steps that had been taken on trade since the SALT agreement.”

Kissinger forwarded the memorandum of his July 29 conversation to the President under cover of an August 9 memorandum. (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, President’s Trip Files, Box 492, Dobrynin/HAK 1971, Volume 7, Part 2)