Feminine Ideal

The most powerful woman in Russia, and hence the official ideal for all others, is Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva, 50, wife, mother, only female on the all-powerful Party Presidium--and one of Nikita Khrushchev's closest chums.

Last week Ekaterina (Khrushchev calls her Katya) dropped into London for a visit, and it was obvious that the Russian ideal was changing. Down 15 Ibs. (from 150), her ash-blonde hair brushed back in a casual sweep, newly chic in a slim, turquoise linen suit, Katya asked the curious women reporters who greeted her at the airport: "What do you think I should wear to dine with an earl?"

This was a far cry from the girl who won Khrushchev's affection and powerful support. A onetime textile worker and a tough organizer for the Komsomol youth groups, Ekaterina joined the party secretariat of a Moscow district in 1942 and there met Khrushchev, after which promotions came fast. After Stalin's death, she became the Moscow party boss.

She made full membership of the Presidium in 1957 (and got back her husband, who had been shipped off as ambassador first to Prague, then to Belgrade). Her daughter married the son of Secretary of the Communist Party Frol Kozlov. Until Khrushchev started taking Wife Nina along on his trips, Katya functioned as Communism's unofficial First Lady, accompanying Khrushchev to Peking, Prague and Vienna. In those days, Katya was a bit of a juggernaut--shoulders padded, hair pulled back severely in a bun, not a trace of makeup. But Katya had professional as well as social talents in Khrushchev's eyes--she rallied the Moscow party machinery firmly behind him in his 1956 purge of old-line Stalinists who had tried to overthrow him.

At some point in her travels, culture began to rub off on Katya. She turned up at almost every performance of foreign artists in Moscow. Under Katya, cultural exchanges with the West have shot up sharply.

Then the padded shoulders and bun disappeared. Last month she dropped in on the starlet-studded Cannes film festival, went on to Paris for a chat with Andre Malraux. On her current junket, she touched down in Denmark, Iceland and then London, where the earl in question was the music-loving Earl of Harewood. For the dinner, Katya finally chose that staple of feminine fashion, "the little black dress" (mascara, no lipstick or jewels). "Our ambition," she said, "is to become even more elegant than you." How had she reduced? "Tennis, the secret of a good figure. Diet? I never diet. I eat everything." With that, she flew back to Moscow, where the knowing party climbers hang on her every word, explaining: "Whatever Furtseva says, Khrushchev means."

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