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Khrushchev: When I reach 99 years, we will discuss the question of bases further.
Nixon: You mean that at 99 you will still be in power? No free elections?
Hall of Rabbits. By this time the Soviet press had thawed, and began running detailed accounts of the running debate between Nixon and Khrushchev. Both Pravda and Izvestia even carried photographs of Nixon. When Nixon got around to visiting Moscow's permanent U.S.S.R. Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition, just about everybody in Moscow seemed to know who he was. Walking around the monumental 500-acre exhibition — which even includes a Hall of Rabbits—Nixon shook more than a hundred hands, smiled at and was smiled at by thousands of friendly Russians.
He also got his first taste of Soviet heckling, and he drew cheers from Russian bystanders by politely turning aside hostile questions. Samples:
Heckler No. 1: Why does America oppose a solution to the Berlin question?
Nixon: I am going to sit down with Mr. Khrushchev and discuss that question tomorrow. You must remember it takes two to agree.
Heckler No. 2: Why do you say that we are captive people?
Nixon: I think it is fine to have freedom of speech, and I hope that you will always have the right to speak your opinion.
"Ice on Our Backs." On Saturday evening, Nixon hosted a roast-beef dinner for Khrushchev at the U.S. embassy's Spaso
House. A surprise guest was Khrushchev's wife Nadezhda, who, like most Kremlin wives, usually stays offstage. Speaking serviceable English, she chatted amiably with Pat Nixon, who had been spending her days visiting orphanages and hospitals.
With the first toast of the evening, Nixon set a friendly tone for the gathering: "I want to say a word about Mr. Khrushchev on an occasion when I am representing the President of the U.S. Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Eisenhower are alike in one respect. They are both men who had humble beginnings and came to the top. The Prime Minister was once a miner. The President worked his way through school, and among his jobs was the back-breaking job of carrying ice."
Khrushchev's response was amiable in tone, but he could not resist strumming away once again at his obsessive theme that the U.S.S.R. will soon catch up with the U.S. "In the people of the U.S.," he said, "the Soviet people have a match. But you do not recognize us as a match. The sooner you recognize this the better. We will be wealthy, too, and we will surpass you. We, too, are carrying ice on our backs."
He followed up with a toast to President Eisenhower. "I, like all my colleagues, like your President." he said. "We like his sincerity, his gentlemanship."
In a surprise gesture of friendliness, Khrushchev invited the Nixons, Milton Eisenhower and Ambassador Thompson to spend that night at his cream-colored dacha 20 miles outside Moscow. The invitation was promptly accepted.