Surprise Party

It was a sunny garden party at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and on the elm-shaded lawn, children darted while their parents sipped champagne. Suddenly, all unheralded, a squad of stocky men in baggy dark suits, all doing their best to look affable, marched into the garden and greeted the hostess, Mrs. Charles E. Bohlen, wife of the U.S. Ambassador. Beaming at their head was round-polled Nikita Khrushchev, 61, First Secretary of the Russian Communist Party. With him was an imposing array of politburocrats: goateed Premier Nikolai Bulganin, smiling professorially; First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, the clever Armenian who masterminds Soviet trade policy; Old Bolshevik Lazar Kaganovich and Young Bolshevik Maxim Saburov; Georgy Malenkov, once Premier, now electrical-power boss; cob-nosed Andrei Gromyko, looking for once as if he had not an enemy in sight.

It was the first time that the rulers of Communist Russia had accepted an invitation to attend the U.S. Independence Day party. Ambassador Bohlen was away in Washington, briefing President Eisenhower for the Geneva conference, so Khrushchev bore down on Walter N. Walmsley Jr., Bohlen's deputy, and loudly announced: "I have a little speech to make."

Facts & Fantasy. "That is what we agreed on, isn't it?" said Khrushchev to his colleagues. Mikoyan and Kaganovich nodded. The party boss looked around for Premier Bulganin, who had turned off in the crush of people, and missing him, remarked: "I have discussed this with Bulganin, and he agrees with me . . ." Then grabbing Walmsley by the lapels--his customary way of speaking when he is serious--Khrushchev began: "I liked the last statement of Eisenhower at his press conference--not all of it, I must tell the truth: there were right things and wrong things. In any case, what he said was a fresh stream of ozone."*

Warming to his subject and maintaining his lapel grip, Khrushchev launched an attack on "responsible people in the U.S." who "read tea leaves" and talk of Soviet weakness. Some people, he said, "ponder why the Soviet Union has made so many proposals that please the West." They seem to think that if the Soviet Union makes a good decision "there is something that forced it to make that decision, and even that the Soviet Union fears some catastrophe if it does not." Let me tell you, said Khrushchev, letting go of Walmsley's coat but grasping his arm instead, such speculation is "a fantasy of stupid people." Lowering his voice and looking around to see that no ladies could hear, he confided to the Americans: "We say of those people who think this way: 'If a mother-in-law is unfaithful, she would not believe in the faithfulness of her son's wife.'"

Upright Soldiers? In fact, said Khrushchev: "We have never had a more solid situation than we have now . . . Our agriculture is in full swing. I don't care whether you like it or not, but I am telling you . . . Our industry is overfulfilling its plans, and still we criticize it and say it is not enough. We criticize it not because we are weak, but because we are strong. As for the unity of the people with the party--you send people around the country; you can judge for yourselves." By this time, Khrushchev had changed from champagne to Scotch and soda. He went on: "We are not going to Geneva with broken legs. We are going like upright soldiers to meet with worthy partners. And that is the only right way . . . If you talk to us honestly as equal to equal, something will come of it . . .I tell you this because there still is time to think . . . But if we go to Geneva like merchants, then there is no reason to go."

Shake on That. At one point, the Party Secretary looked around for approval from his colleagues. Bulganin, who had been rounded up, moved over and said: "Yes, I support him." Kaganovich added: "We all agree with him." Khrushchev later greeted French Ambassador Louis Joxe and talked about Germany. "I think France needs a reduction in tensions more than we do," he said. "I don't want to offend you, but I think we are stronger than you. Germany menaces us less than you."

Before leaving, Khrushchev marched up to Major William Fife of Johnson City, Tenn., the assistant U.S. air attache. Said he: "I want to tell you that we don't want war, and we know that .you don't want war. But if we have to fight, let's be on the same side." Surprised, the major grinned. "Let's shake on that," he said. They did, and the burly Russian walked out of the garden party with the committee trailing after.

*Apparently what happens to "a breath of fresh air" by the time it passes back and forth between English, Russian and back into English.

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