Cold War: A Deal in Wheat?

In his famed threat to capitalism in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev thundered "We will bury you." He has since insisted that Communism would win in an economic rather than a thermonuclear sense. But last week Khrushchev had to seek U.S. help to prevent his own economy from being buried. A Soviet trade mission asked to buy about $170 million's worth of U.S. wheat.

Faced with a bitter harvest for the fourth year out of the last five, the Soviets have been shopping for wheat in every major Western market. Two weeks ago they ordered about $500 million's worth from Canada,...

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