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Georgy Markovich Korniyenko (alsoKornienko;Russian:Гео́ргий Ма́ркович Корние́нко, 13 February 1925 – 10 May 2006) was aSoviet diplomat.
He joined the SovietMinistry of Foreign Affairs in 1949 and later became an attaché at the Soviet Embassy inWashington, D.C. during the 1962Cuban Missile Crisis. Then in 1964 he was assigned to head the Soviet Foreign Ministry's American desk. He became a deputy toSoviet Foreign MinisterAndrei Gromyko in 1975 and the first deputy two years later.
He was instrumental in developing Soviet policy toward theUnited States and setting the agenda for U.S.-Soviet disarmament talks in the 1970s and the 1980s. He is known to have clashed on occasion with other members of the Soviet elite on foreign policy issues. In 1983, when a Soviet fightershot down a Korean airliner intruding into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board, Korniyenko opposed the officialKremlin course on the incident and futilely urged the Communist Party leadership to release more information about it to avoidinternational isolation.
He was one of the few Soviet leaders who opposed the 1979Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was awarded theHero of Socialist Labour in 1985, one of the highest awards in the Soviet Union. He died after a lengthy unspecified illness.
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