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Zhukov was next. The marshal had emerged from the June fight with more power than ever, and he was going around telling Khrushchev's propaganda boys not to confuse his army's disciplined efficiency with their lectures about the party's supremacy. It was an awkward time for Khrushchev to strike; by then the marshal was touring Yugoslavia as Tito's honored guest, and the preparations for celebrating the Soviet's 40th anniversary were well under way in Moscow. But Khrushchev struck. His party machine whirred soundlessly. Within a week after Zhukov's return to Moscow, the Soviet Union's top soldier and war hero made an abject confession of "errors," and Khrushchev told foreign reporters with boozy insouciance: "In life, one cell must die and another take its place. But life goes on. Marshal Zhukov did not turn out well as a political figure, but he was a good marshal and a good soldier." Just then, Sputnik II shot into space, and its roar drowned out the hubbub over Zhukov's fall.
In the Middle East Nikita Khrushchev posed as an altruist. Advancing $563 million in arms and economic aid to the Arab nationalists of Syria and Egypt, he cried: "Is Nasser a Communist? Certainly not. But nevertheless we support Nasser. We have only one objective, that the peoples be freed from colonial dependence." Last week Pravda offered the pro-Western Arab states of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq "ready Soviet Union cooperation in economic development," if they too would accept "the same [i.e., neutralist] principles" as Syria and Egypt.
In the eyes of those who go by appearances, Nikita changed the face of Russia. Instead of the remote, terrifying, frozen face of Stalin, he presented the jouncy, faintly ridiculous figure of the cartoonists' politician: he kissed babies, was smeared with villagers' vermilion paste on a visit with Nehru, rummaged among cornstalks as though he were running for office. In his trips abroad, he was as folksy as an overweight Will Rogers, carefully avoided any association with the skulking, oldtime conspiratorial local Communists, managed to suggest that Communist parties are as respectable as Christian Democrats or Tories. After destalinization, Italy's Communist party lost 250,000 members and its inner discipline. Last week three of five party members attended their cell meetings—reportedly the highest proportion since 1946.
Nikita's success was ratified at the ceremonies celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Soviet revolution in Moscow last November. China's Mao was so convinced of the Tightness of Khrushchev's policy reversal that he led the way for the adoption of Khrushchev's manifesto. Mao formally acknowledged the Soviet party's "leading role among the Communist and workers' parties," added: "China does not even have a quarter of a Sputnik and the Soviet Union has two."