DIPLOMACY (See Cover)
"Nikita Sergeevich, I salute you on American soil," said the U.S.S.R.'s Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. last week—and there he was. There on American soil was Nikita Khrushchev, short, bald and portly, wearing a black suit, Homburg and three small medals, bowing down the receiving line, accepting a 21-gun salute, parading past a guard of honor. There on his one hand stood his pleasant, shy wife Nina Petrovna, his daughters Julia, 38, and Rada, 29, his studious-looking son Sergei, 24, and a retinue of 63 officials and bureaucrats. There on his other hand stood President Eisenhower. "Permit me at this moment to thank Mr. Eisenhower for the invitation," Khrushchev said graciously, responding to the President's coolly proper speech of greeting. "The Soviet people want to live in friendship with the American people." But Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev was not five minutes into his speech or 15 minutes into the U.S. before he sounded a prideful note of power that was to echo, sometimes blaring, sometimes muted, as the dominant theme of his trip. "Shortly before this meeting with you, Mr. President," he said, "the Soviet scientists, technicians, engineers and workers filled our hearts with joy by launching a rocket to the moon. We have no doubt that the excellent scientists, engineers and workers of the U.S.A. will also carry the pennant to the moon. The Soviet pennant, as an old resident, will then welcome your pennant." Khrushchev's tone at this point was so pleasantly conversational that Ambassador Menshikov flashed a warm beam, but Khrushchev's pleasantness stopped at his ice-cold bullet eyes. The Facts of Life. Thus began what was, from Washington to Manhattan to Los Angeles to San Francisco, not so much a move to reduce world tension as a historic and tireless one-man campaign to cajole, flatter, wheedle, shame, threaten and defy the U.S. into changing its way of looking at the world.
Khrushchev defined it most bluntly in Washington: "There are only two nations which are powerful—the Soviet Union and the U.S. You people must accept the facts of life. You must recognize that we are here to stay." Khrushchev's argument: the U.S. must accept that fact and concede a "status quo" or "thaw" or "peace." It must close down its worldwide deterrent bases and disarm. It should reap the golden harvest of trade with Communist nations. It should leave to a furious peacetime competition the settlement of the classic feud between Communism and capitalism. Ultimately, he declared cockily, Communism would win anyway.