K. Minus B.

East German Communists were all set to put out the welcome mat for the touring Kremlin leaders last week, but no one knew what to say on it. The satirical weekly Eulenspiegel (circ. 400,000) went to press too far in advance with a cartoon of B. and K. arriving in tubby tandem. East Berlin diplomats received handsome engraved invitations to a reception honoring B. and K. For 24 hours after Moscow's last-minute announcement that Premier Bulganin would not be a member of the party, one long red banner strung across an East Berlin building said simply: WE GREET, and when finally finished read: WE GREET THE GLORIOUS SOVIET LEADERS.

Khrushchev, ready to be the life of the party all by himself, stepped down from the train at Berlin's Ostbahnhof to plant chummy kisses on both cheeks of Party Boss Walter Ulbricht and Premier Otto Grotewohl. With Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, the agile Armenian, at his elbow as Bulganin's tardy standin, Khrushchev marched confidently through the station to inspect a bristling guard of Russian-helmeted East Germans, and take the cheers of some 10,000 Berliners conscripted from their government offices and factories for the occasion.

Half Slave. The crowd was strangely quiet, almost as chilly as the Finns who looked Khrushchev over in Helsinki last June. As the inevitable flaxen-haired girls skipped forward with their whopping bouquets, little groups here and there tried to spark pro-Soviet chants, but their efforts fell flat. Hastily, a band struck up a tune, the old nationalist Prussian Glory march. As Khrushchev finally launched into a speech, a husky Negro, resplendent in billowing orange tribal robes, burst through police lines, capered up to the platform and reached out at him. Kicked and pummeled back into the crowd by the horrified Ulbricht's cops, after he had managed to shake hands with Khrushchev, the man turned out to be no assassin, but a Nigerian student on a round-the-world motor-scooter trip who had only wanted to hand Khrushchev a thank-you letter for his new Soviet visa.

After two days of wreath-laying, factory tours and hat-waving parades through largely deserted streets, it became apparent that the Khrushchev party had not come to Berlin to offer any dazzling scheme for German reunification that might sway West Germany's election against Chancellor Adenauer next month. Quite the contrary. After toasting Old Stalinist Ulbricht's "correct" leadership, Khrushchev told the stooge East German Parliament: "Adenauer's policy of strength may be the path he chooses, but it is full of danger. Hitler also followed a policy of strength, and we know where he ended." Khrushchev made it plain that Russia is quite satisfied with a Germany half slave, half free.

Empty Seats. At week's end the team of Nick and Mick broke up. Mikoyan, the trade specialist, journeyed up to the Baltic seaports to demand to know why East Germany has made good only a third of its scheduled heavy-goods deliveries to Russia in the first half of 1957. Nikita Khrushchev and Ulbricht took the main show southward on a three-day swing through the Saxon farmland. A state-run corn farm delighted him; he pointed to stalks 9 ft. high, and recommended the "king of the plants" to East Germans as "sausage on a stalk."

At a "mass rally" at the Leipzig stadium (last filled to its 100,000 capacity at a Protestant church day in 1954), Khrushchev was soaked by a drenching rain that broke as he entered the arena. "This is not the welcome we had planned for the glorious Soviet leader," wailed the East German TV announcer. Though trumpets blared, fireworks exploded and uniformed Communist youth groups marched, the Communist TV cameras inadvertently gave the show away by panning slowly across thousands of empty seats. After that, embarrassed East German Communists gave up live TV coverage of the Khrushchev tour, and set about organizing a monster windup rally in East Berlin's Marx-Engels Platz that would give their Russian master a Red-hot sendoff.

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