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As Khrushchev rambled on. Poland's Gomulka nodded continually in pleased agreement. At midweek the dour Gomulka found even more to smile about. Gomulka, while beset by peasantry, church and intellectuals who want no part of Communism, is sniped at inside his party by a doctrinaire Stalinist group that deplores his every concession. Speaking in the gigantic Palace of Culture and Science, Russia's tasteless contribution to the war-ragged Warsaw skyline, Khrushchev abruptly pulled the rug out from under the diehard Stalinists who oppose Gomulka in the name of Marxist purity. "These party members," said Khrushchev, "sometimes depict themselves as being the closest friends of the Soviet Union. But if one looks at these people realistically, it becomes clear that theirs is not a realistic, concrete, clear tendency."
Lesson in Etiquette. The Polish tour ended without any serious mishap for Khrushchev, but nonetheless, as the New York Times Correspondent A. M. Rosenthal reported, "Khrushchev usually got ten seconds of applause in exchange for about fifty minutes of speech."
On Khrushchev's next scheduled trip, to Scandinavia, things were obviously going to be worse. A campaign had already begun, supported by newspapers and prominent public figures, to give Khrushchev the silent treatment. Last week the Soviet Foreign Office called in the Moscow envoys of Sweden, Denmark and Norway to inform them coldly that Nikita had decided to cancel his Scandinavian tour. Originally, he had planned to talk up his proposal for a nuclear-free "Baltic zone of peace," an odd notion for him to peddle, since Russia alone of the Baltic powers has nuclear weapons. Obviously he would not get far with it, and was in no mood to expose himself to so well publicized a loss of face. Besides, he said, the Scandinavian governments had encouraged press and public criticism of his visit. "If they spit in my face," he snapped, "why should I go?"
Then, having read the world a lesson in the kind of etiquette he expected on international visits, Nikita Khrushchev flew back to Moscow to play host, in his own inimitable fashion, to Vice President Nixon.