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At the dacha next day, Nixon and Khrushchev issued a joint statement protesting that their exchange at the U.S. exhibition, while "frank," was not "belligerent." Then Khrushchev took his guests for a ride on the Moscow River in a 25-ft. motor boat. Eight times Khrushchev had the boat stopped so that he and Nixon could talk to groups of bathers on the beaches along the river, and each time, with broken-record repetition, the same thing happened. Khrushchev would point out the bathers to Nixon as "captive people"; they would yell "nyet, nyet," and Khrushchev would grin, nudge Nixon and say: "Here are your captive people. Just look how happy they are."
After the boat ride came a late lunch on a knoll overlooking the river, and then Nixon and Khrushchev settled down to serious private talks.
The Urals & Beyond. Before he left Washington for Moscow, Richard Nixon had worried that Khrushchev might snub him and permit only brief, formal contacts. Instead, Nixon saw Khrushchev more often, on more intimate terms, than any American visitor to Moscow before him. A totalitarian unused to real debate, Khrushchev grew increasingly amiable despite Nixon's back talk—or perhaps because of it.
Khrushchev's amiability even survived Nixon's surprise announcement near week's end that, after his tour of industrial centers in the Urals and Siberia this week, he is planning to make a four-day visit to satellite Poland on the way back to the U.S. In a sense, Khrushchev had himself to blame for Nixon's decision to visit Poland. Nixon had asked for permission to fly across Siberia and visit the Pacific port of Vladivostok, returning to the U.S. by way of Alaska, but the Kremlin vetoed that plan. After that, Nixon decided to accept a longstanding offer from the government of Communist Chief Wladyslaw Gomulka to visit Poland.
Coming after the U.S.'s Captive Nations Week proclamation and the coolish reception that Khrushchev got on his recent visit to Poland, a warm Polish welcome for Nixon would be a notable wind-up for a most notable cold-war journey.
* The full exchange was duly broadcast in the U.S. by the three major television networks, with an English translation of everything Khrushchev said.