The Visitor

RUSSIA The Visitor

Only 14 years before, Nazi troops were probing to within 20 miles of Moscow, and behind them half a million square miles of Russia lay charred. Only ten years before, a sullen shuffle of a defeated, captured Nazi army marched on dismal parade through Moscow's streets. And now, with a rattle of drums, a blare of horns and the clatter of a goose-stepping honor guard, the leader of the new Germany was received in Moscow.

There was no suggestion of the intimidated, the vanquished or the bidden about Konrad Adenauer's visit. The Germans traveled east with a showy, if not disdainful, display of self-reliance. A gleaming, 13-car train, a "chancellery on wheels," pulled in the day before carrying a huge entourage, with the Germans' own communications, their own police, Mercedes sedans, and huge stocks of their own food (sauerkraut, sausages, choice wines). Even the motorized gangway that pulled up to the door of Adenauer's Super Constellation had been shipped in ahead.

The Duelists. The first German Chancellor ever to visit Russia relieved this aura of bristly independence with a friendly smile as he stepped lightly down the gangway and grasped the warmly extended hand of Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin.

"May this be the beginning of ... normal good relations between Germany and the Soviet Union," said Adenauer to the beaming reception committee of high Soviet officials. But even before the spoken formalities and the strains of West Germany's Deutschland Lied were carried off by the brisk autumn wind, tough old

Konrad Adenauer got down to the business that had taken him into the camp of his antagonists. "This," he said with a point to his words, "is the first contact between representatives of the Soviet Union and the German people."

Thus the duel began, with Adenauer's calculated and contemptuous dismissal of the Communist regime of East Germany.

In the "chancellery on wheels," before the first session began, Adenauer counseled with his aides. They had few expectations. The fact of the Kremlin's invitation to Adenauer--the formal recognition of a man they had so long reviled as an enemy, of a regime they had refused to recognize--was in itself bigger than anything that the visit itself was likely to produce. The Russians wanted to talk about formal diplomatic and economic relations between Moscow and Bonn, and to consider Germany's reunification only at the price of West Germany's withdrawal from the Western alliance. Adenauer had already agreed with the U.S., Britain and France to refrain at Moscow from any dickering on such terms. Adenauer had a slight hope that the Russians, to encourage diplomatic relations, might be persuaded to return some of the Germans still imprisoned in Russia since World War II. Beyond that, what took place at Moscow hinged on the wary testing game that was about to be played, and on the unpredictable behavior of the Russians.

Fast & Frank. In the marbled, white-and-gold music room of Spiridonovka palace (once a Czarist millionaire's mansion), the antagonists faced off. Bulganin, flanked by Khrushchev and Molotov, sat with the morning sun at his back. Chancellor Adenauer, with Foreign Minister Brentano at his elbow, sat facing them.

Tobacco smoke made ribbons beneath two huge, dazzling chandeliers, as Konrad Adenauer drew his steel-stiff frame close to the table.

He began with an assurance: "You will not find anybody in Germany--not only among responsible politicians but also among the whole population--who even remotely entertains the notion that any of the great political problems awaiting a solution could be served by means of war." He extended that sentiment to his NATO allies. Since the Kremlin had bade him come and discuss "the normalization of relations," Adenauer laid down his terms. "I do not think it will suffice to outlaw war, to create security systems and to establish, so to speak, in a mechanical way, diplomatic, economic and cultural relations," said Adenauer. Two important Soviet deeds were necessary: P:The return of Germans still imprisoned in Russia, said by Bonn to number 80,000 to 100,000. "It is an unbearable thought," said Adenauer, "that more than ten years after the end of hostilities, human beings . . . should be kept away from . . . their homes. It is unthinkable to establish 'normal' relations so long as this question remains unsolved."

P:The reunification of Germany, with freedom to choose or reject its alliances. "We are, I believe, in agreement that the division of Germany creates an intolerable situation."

The first day's session ended, and was followed by an evening of pleasant festivities. Next day, it was Premier Bulganin's turn to answer.

"Mr. Adenauer has expressed his desire to conduct the negotiations in a spirit of complete frankness," said Bulganin. "We would like to do the same thing." He repeated Russia's insistence that German membership in the Western alliance had created an "obstacle" to reunification. And as for the prisoners still held in Russia, "there is a definite misunderstanding. There are no German prisoners of war . . . only war criminals from the former Hitlerite army . . . 9,626 such people."

Terrible Things. Slowly, deliberately Bulganin summoned back the terrible memories that had been lying all along just beneath the thin veneer of cheerfulness. "The Soviet people cannot forget ... the shooting of 70,000 people at Babi Yar ... the millions of people shot, gassed or burned alive in the German concentration camps . . . Majdanek . . . Oswiecim . . . Kharkov." It rolled out like a litany. "Smolensk . . . Krasnodar . . . Lvov." The 9,626 imprisoned Germans were paying for those crimes, said Bulganin. If they were released at all, it could only be through negotiations in which Adenauer would have to sit down with the East German Communists.

Adenauer listened tensely, his face even paler than usual, then replied to Bulganin. It was wrong, he said, to blame all Germans for what the Nazis did: "A great part of them were against Hitler and an overwhelming part were against war." No one would deny that the Soviet Union had suffered enormously during the war, said he. "But when Russian troops entered Germany, terrible things happened too."

Burly Nikita Khrushchev stirred out of his silence. Adenauer's charge of Russian atrocities, he said, was "offensive." He was visibly as agitated as Adenauer had been. "The Russian soldiers fulfilled their sacred duties for their people," he said. "If many Germans perished, far more Russians perished. After all, who is responsible? We did not cross any frontiers. We did not start the war."

Adenauer was not quite finished. He also, he said, had had a bad time under the Nazis. He had even been thrown in jail, where he had had time to worry not only about what the Germans were doing, but also about those foreign nations who were supporting Hitler: a sharp reference to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.

But as suddenly as it started, the flare of passion subsided; the men facing each other beneath the dazzling chandeliers were professionals who could not afford the easy-out of strong feelings. Nikita Khrushchev, under control again, switched from strong words to soft. One should bury memories of the past, he said, because vengeance is not a good adviser; there must be good relations between Russians and Germans. A cold correctness replaced the honest heat of emotion. When the delegates strode out of the palace that day, Adenauer's face was grim. So far the conference, said a German, had produced only "an open exchange of blows."

Over the weekend, before the business sessions resumed, there were many attempts to restore cordiality. Adenauer invited all the Russian leaders out to the dacha they had lent him outside Moscow. The Russians gave a special performance of Romeo and Juliet, starring the great ballerina Ulanova, at the Bolshoi Theater. The ballet closes with the elders, Montague and Capulet, clasping hands in reconciliation. In the special box, 79-year-old Konrad Adenauer rose and grasped the hands of Premier Bulganin and held them high. The audience burst into applause. Next day there was a festive lunch at which Khrushchev got chummy with chubby German Socialist Carlo Schmid, who proved he could outdrink the Russians. Adenauer toasted the "good human relations" he had achieved with Bulganin; and Khrushchev made wisecracks about how Bulganin was bossing everyone around at the picture-taking ("He is not as big as he looks").

But underlying it all was a chill that cordiality could not conceal: a steely and unsentimental confrontation of men, of countries, of codes that were antipathetic to each other. At one point, Khrushchev, essaying a small compliment, remarked that much liberated German wine had reached Russia since the war, and that he had come to like it. "Come visit me, my friend," said Adenauer slowly, "and I will show you that guest wine is much better than liberated wine."

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