New Line & Rough

Outside the tall arched windows of the Great Kremlin Hall, rain squalls chased the spring sunbeams across Moscow's sky. Inside, the 1,378 members of what passes for the Soviet Union's parliament sat tense and expectant at long rows of neat desks. Diplomats, newsmen, and a delegation from Ghana stared down from packed galleries. At the tribune hunched the familiar, round, shiny-pated figure of Nikita Khrushchev. His voice was strident and bitter. Gone was the bland old bluster about "peace and friendship," as the Soviet boss, in we-will-bury-you language, denounced the U.S. for sending a plane over Russia (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) in "an aggressive provocation aimed at wrecking the summit conference."

It was his most ferocious attack on the West since he demanded allied withdrawal from Berlin 18 months ago. Khrushchev made clear that the U-2 "banditry" was not the only thing that bothered him. He also cited recent speeches by such U.S. leaders as Secretary of State Herter, Under Secretary of State Dillon and Vice President Nixon. All, growled Khrushchev, were "a bad sign" for the summit. What seemed to rankle most of all was Dillon's speech, which charged bluntly that East Berliners "are constrained to live under a totalitarian regime, unlawfully imposed by a foreign power," and warned that in pressing for allied concessions, Khrushchev was skating on thin ice. "If we must speak of thin ice," thundered Khrushchev, "then look, Mr. Dillon, what you are standing on. Unfortunately, these speeches have been approved by the President of the United States. This makes things worse."

Keep Out of the Kitchen. Khrushchev seemed especially angry that President Eisenhower had said that he could stay no more than seven days at the summit and had suggested that if it lasted longer, Vice President Nixon should replace him. Evidently still smarting from his unscheduled debate with Nixon at the U.S. fair in Moscow last summer, Khrushchev rumbled: "It is hard for me to shake the impression that the last thing Nixon has in mind is to reach agreement on outstanding questions, liquidate the conditions of tension, and stop the arms race." Sending him to the summit, added Khrushchev, drawing on his ghostwriters' stock of Russian parables, is like "leaving the cabbage to the care of the goat."

Why had Khrushchev turned truculent? Best guess was that Khrushchev had concluded that the West was not to be smiled into concessions. When he dropped the time limit on his Berlin proposals and proposed the summit talks, he may have hoped the West would prove willing to yield a point or two. But the solidarity displayed by the West as the summit approached made it evident that the West was not to be bamboozled into damaging concessions just for the sake of easing a crisis that Khrushchev had created in the first place. His soft talk was getting him nowhere, and there were powerful forces in the Communist bloc that had always preferred talking tough.

Keep Out of the Air. Khrushchev launched on his new line three weeks ago. In a bombastic speech at Baku, he warned that if he signed a separate peace treaty with East Germany, the Western allies "will naturally not be able to reach Berlin by land, water or air," and if they try to use force for the purpose, "this force will be opposed by force from the other side, based on law and right."

Khrushchev's move was also simple tactics. In recent weeks, Western leaders had seemed to take him too much for granted. Official leaks spoke of Khrushchev's "need" to be conciliatory at the summit because of public pressure at home, or because he had staked his prestige in the Communist camp on making "peaceful coexistence" a success. By seizing on the U-2 incident, he apparently hoped to turn the tables and bring the U.S. to the conference table at what he thought would be a disadvantage.

The switch pleased the Communist critics of Khrushchev's peaceful-coexistence line. SOVIET ROCKET PROTECTS PEACE, blared the Chinese Communist publication Ta Kung Pao's enthusiastic headline last week. It also served to refute the charge that he had become "soft on democracy." Even domestically, it could serve a purpose. If Russia's Ivans were wondering why Khrushchev's vaunted prosperity was not paying off as handsomely in comfort and amenities as they had been led to believe, this was an excuse of sorts: the money was going to protect Mother Russia against wicked imperialists.

But Khrushchev was making the most of catching the U.S. in an embarrassing spot. With typical peasant crudity, he snapped: "The foreign press is saying Khrushchev is only trying to torpedo the summit. My answer is: You and your masters are accustomed to calling a stench perfume. It is your excrement. So smell it.

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