The Horse's Mouth

In the midst of all the glad-handing in the supermarkets, the other face of Russia came through clear and cold last week from Moscow. It was the face of Nikita Khrushchev, confident, truculent, uncompromising, as he told W. Averell Harriman, U.S. wartime Ambassador to Russia, what he thought of things in a tone that Harriman--were he still ambassador--would have had to protest.

Fortnight ago. Khrushchev not only received Harriman at the Kremlin, but drove him out into the country for an intimate little dinner with Kozlov, Mikoyan and Gromyko. Last week an alarmed Harriman cabled significant excerpts of the conversation to Washington for President Eisenhower to study, and repeated some of them in articles for LIFE and the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Our Man in Geneva. The experience was something like watching the cold war in quick time; in Khrushchev's dialogue, threats followed thaws in a matter of seconds instead of weeks. Now burbling toasts to peace, now bellowing belligerently, Khrushchev made no secret of his cynical contempt for the foreign ministers' meeting at Geneva. "Gromyko." he said, pointing to his Foreign Minister sitting glumly at the foot of the table, "only says what we tell him to say. At the next Geneva meeting he will repeat what he has already told you. If he doesn't, we will fire him and get someone who does."

Switching to another mood, Khrushchev boasted that "in five to seven years we will be stronger than you. We developed the hydrogen bomb before you. Our rockets carry warheads many times larger than yours." Later, he mawkishly spoke of the man responsible for all this progress, the same man that he himself denounced three years ago in his dramatic, weepy oration to the 20th Party Congress as a maniac who had deported, tortured and killed by the millions. Describing Stalin's last days, in the first such account ever given a Westerner, Khrushchev told Harriman that for three days he, Beria, Bulganin and Malenkov had kept their vigil at Stalin's dacha while the great man lay in a final coma. Suddenly. Stalin awoke, and weakly pointing to a picture of a little girl feeding a lamb, "indicated by his gesture that now he was as helpless as the lamb. A few minutes later he died. I wept," said Khrushchev. "After all. we are all his pupils."

"Most Unpopular Man." Once a pupil, Khrushchev still seemed to believe all that his masters had taught about conditions in the U.S. "You became so rich." he told Harriman. "that until now you have been able to bribe or buy off your workers." That was why free elections in the capitalist world are such a "farce."Though Konrad Adenauer had been elected Chancellor again and again, Khrushchev seemed to think that he was still the "most unpopular man in Germany." His successor would soon enough have to reckon with the power of Soviet missiles. At one point, Khrushchev indulged in a crude bit of humor that began, "Look at Adenauer in the nude, and you will understand Germany," and then went on from there.

As for West Berlin, the Soviets did not give a fig for the city or its 2,200,000 inhabitants ("We prefer that you feed them"). But Khrushchev left no doubt that the days of Western "occupation" were numbered. "Your generals talk of maintaining your position by force. That is bluff. If you send in tanks, they will burn. If you want war, you can have it, but it will be your war. Our rockets will fly automatically."

The conversation turned to China: no, nothing would drive Russia and China apart. There came another flash of menace (and this time what Khrushchev had to say was new):

P: The Soviet Union has now supplied Red China with enough rockets to bom bard Formosa, and the Communists have now enough firepower to blow the U.S. Seventh Fleet out of the straits. P: The Soviet Union, already pledged to help Red China in case of attack from Formosa, is now willing to go a step farther: should Peking ask, it would help Red China in an attack on Formosa.

Khrushchev's conduct was so bristling, his change of mien so unpredictable, that Harriman found himself making what seemed at first a contradictory judgment on Khrushchev's performance. He is so good an actor, reported Harriman, that his threats need not be taken at full value; yet he was not all bluff either. Above all. insisted Harriman. Khrushchev was always in "full control of himself"; this was no ranting Hitlerian performance. Then what did it all add up to?

Onward & Upward. The Poles have a story about how Gomulka once chided Khrushchev on blowing so hot and cold. "You must not be so inconsistent," said the Pole. "This is no way to deal with the West." To which Khrushchev replied: "You are wrong. Comrade Gomulka. Quite wrong. The West has a variety of spokesmen who speak in a variety of ways. I must be all of Russia's spokesmen myself." This story was told again in London last week, where diplomats were still dreaming of a white summit. "It is always well to travel hopefully." said the Daily Telegraph, "even if you do not expect to arrive." Neither failure to agree at Geneva nor Khrushchev's contemptuous dismissal of Gromyko as errand boy daunted the British; nor were they deterred by the evidence that Khrushchev obviously thought he had the West in a bind, and was in no conciliatory mood. The British wanted a summit.

Planned Bewilderment. The net of the week's news from Russia--the alternation of menace and smiles--was of course part of the familiar Communist tactic of planned bewilderment. It came naturally, as did Khrushchev's talk, the eloquence of a demagogue who believes for the moment whatever he is saying. But the contradictoriness of Russian behavior also goes deeper than tactics: it reflects two contrary strains in Soviet society. The one is the Communist self-confidence, cocky, aggressive, overriding, ambitious--which intends to make difficulties, create tensions, exploit weaknesses, gain victories. The other strain, to which the men in the Kremlin must pay attention too, is in the Russian people itself: a desire for peace, among those who suffered so much in war; the desire for progress, for learning new techniques, for enjoying comforts, for emulating the good things in life (reflected in Khrushchev's repeated pledges to "overtake" the U.S. in milk, meat and industrial goods by 1970). Khrushchev played skillfully on both themes--but he was also the slave of them.

After such a performance by Khrushchev, the justification (if there is any) for a summit meeting, or for letting Frol Kozlov electioneer through U.S. supermarkets, in the end came down to the same thing. It was not the idealistic hope of striking fair bargains with unscrupulous men, or agreeing for propaganda's sake to platitudes that mocked realities, but the need, by continued, patient exposure, to correct dangerous misapprehensions about the American strength and American purpose.

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