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This was not done in the quiet hush of conference room or in the empty exchange of views between professional diplomats. It was done in the hours that the grocer's son from Whittier, Calif., the harddriving, notably anti-Communist Republican politico, the No. 2 man in the U.S. Government, stood up in verbal slugging matches with the raffish, cold-eyed son of a Kalinovka miner, the harddriving, notably anti-capitalist Kremlin politician who had survived purge and plot, the No. 1 man of the Soviet Union, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.
Riled by Resolution. Usually self-confident, Nikita Khrushchev had plainly shown that he was bothered by the challenges of the Nixon visit and the U.S. exhibition. For days the official Soviet press had sniped at the exhibition in a campaign to convince Russians that what they would see would not really be representative of U.S. life. As a counterattraction, the Soviet government rushed through a "traditional Moscow fair" to display and sell Soviet consumer goods, some of them rarely or never seen in Moscow stores. The Soviet press buried the news of Nixon's impending visit so thoroughly that few Soviet citizens knew about it ahead of time.
It was a week already marred for Khrushchev by signs of Allied firmness in Geneva (see FOREIGN NEWS), a coolish reception on a visit to Poland, and cancellation of a planned trip to Scandinavia-because of an icy lack of enthusiasm among the Scandinavians. Then came the news of the U.S. Congress's joint resolution—by happenstance coinciding with the Nixon visit—proclaiming Captive Nations Week. At the very moment that Nixon landed, Khrushchev was at a mass meeting denouncing the U.S.'s Captive Nations Week as "provocative" interference in "our internal affairs."
But in his own peculiar way, Khrushchev dropped his surliness, if not his grudges, when he began to tangle with Nixon; Old Politico Nikita Khrushchev, the world's most colorful public showman, can never resist an argument in the spotlight, and Old Politico Richard Nixon, with the eye of U.S. television and the pencils of the nation's press at his elbow, was ready for one.
"What Black Cat?" The two first met the morning after Nixon arrived in Moscow. In a black ZIS limousine he was whisked to the Kremlin for a call on President Kliment Voroshilov, the figure head chief of state, and then on Nikita Khrushchev. In Khrushchev's office began a running debate that lasted, on and off, into the evening. Khrushchev started it by complaining fiercely about the Captive Nations Week proclamation, U.S. overseas bases and restrictions on U.S.-Soviet trade.