pointing to an intimate interconnection between the ideas of pan-Africanism and African neutralism and non-alignment. In 1971, Blyden was again given the chance to put the ideas on which he had built his academic and political careers into practice. Under the presidency of Siaka Stevens, Blyden was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from Sierra Leone to the Soviet Union, and accredited to Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. During his first visit to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs to schedule a date for official presentation of his credentials, Blyden met Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and reminded him of their first meeting in 1949 at the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco. What followed was an extended conversation which also broke the protocol of conversations through translators: Blyden returned to his embassy to find an official invitation to present his credentials the following morning. On a later visit to Moscow, Blyden would be presented with a biography of his grandfather Edward Wilmot Blyden, published by the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Africa and Asia under the directorship of Anatoly Gromyko. Another surprise for Blyden was his meeting with former Harvard classmate, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, during President Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Moscow; both of them now on the world stage. While accredited to Eastern Europe, he orchestrated three successful state visits to Sierra Leone by Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Premier Alexei Kosygin of the Soviet Union, and Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania. Blyden negotiated important agreements between Sierra Leone and Warsaw Pact Countries for trade and development projects in Sierra Leone. From 1974 to 1976 he served as Sierra Leone's Permanent Representative to the United Nations where he was Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization. He was an influential voice of reason in the infamous *Zionism is racism* debate that led to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975, placing Sierra Leone at the center of efforts to table the motion and presenting an Africanist perspective on Zionism first elaborated by his own grandfather in 1898. On his return from the UN, Blyden served as Special Adviser to the President, and played an active role during the 1980 OAU Summit in Sierra Leone, at which he was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal by the visiting U.N. Secretary General. Retirement years He received honorary degrees from the