Knowing How to Leave Gracefully. In Memory of the USSR Ambassador to the PRC (1970–1978) Vasily Sergeyevich Tolstikov

In this article, the author describes events that took place in the mid-1970s of the last century. At that time, he worked as a translator of Chinese and English and accompanied the USSR Ambassador to China, V.S. Tolstikov, to official receptions held during visits to Beijing by highranking foreign delegations. Following the XX Congress of the CPSU in 1956, relations between the two socialist states had significantly deteriorated, which also impacted the work of diplomatic missions. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, amid rampant anti-Soviet propaganda, these events were often used by the Chinese side to launch crude attacks on Moscow's foreign and domestic policies. In such cases, the ambassador faced difficult decisions: either to ignore Chinese aggressive attacks against your country, maintaining composure in the face of its absurdity, or to demonstratively leave the event, thereby placing the Chinese hosts in an uncomfortable position in front of the arriving guests. V.S. Tolstikov performed such demarches artistically, gaining sincere respect in the diplomatic corps. Several decades later, at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as part of the Russian official delegation, the author finds himself back in the same hall of the National People's Congress, where he witnessed the courageous behavior of the Soviet ambassador. But this is a completely different era, an era of unprecedented level of Russian—Chinese cooperation, to which Soviet Ambassador Vasily Sergeyevich Tolstikov had meaningfully contributed.

Beijing, Cultural Revolution, USSR Ambassador, ongoing hostility, official receptions, harsh remarks, demonstrative exit, courage and composure