POLAND: The Confidence Man

Less than three years before, a badly shaken and bellicose Nikita Khrushchev had flown into Warsaw only to find that he had been outmaneuvered: the new boss of Poland—which had come so close to open rebellion against the Soviet Union —was none other than Wladyslaw Gomulka, an out-of-favor Communist whom Stalin had once arrested for refusing to castigate Tito. "Traitor!" Khrushchev bellowed at him during that all-night 1956 session in the Belvedere Palace. "If you don't obey, we will crush you!"

Last week, as Khrushchev alighted from his plane to begin a ten-day...

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