It was the most astonishing international show in years. Emerging from the protection of the Kremlin's wall and the shelter of the Kremlin's controlled press, Russia's top men seemed inept, uncertain, boorish. Yugoslavs watched the antics of Nikita Khrushchev with amazement. Western diplomats, remembering the remote, inscrutable, implacable Joseph Stalin, had to keep reminding themselves that this garrulous little man was his successor.
The blunders began, but did not end, with Khrushchev's airport speech (TIME, June 6). At a diplomatic banquet in Belgrade's White Palace, Khrushchev insultingly asked the Belgian ambassador whether his country was free, and when assured that it was, remarked that the Belgian could only say that because the U.S. ambassador had just left. Goateed Premier Nikolai Bulganin undiplomatically proposed a toast to neutrality, only to have Tito announce bluntly that Yugoslavia was neither neutral nor neutralist, but fiercely independent. Bulganin said lamely he had meant Switzerland.
Oranges & Scuffles. After feting them for two days at his modern villa in Brioni, Tito sent the top Russians off on a tour of Croatia and Slovenia. Khrushchev flabbergasted his hosts by cracking bad jokes, swilling quarts of lemonade from a pitcher-sized glass, gnawing on an orange as voraciously as a dog with a bone. When a flat tire halted his car, he playfully challenged 59-year-old Anastas Mikoyan to a wrestling match. Yugoslavs looked on incredulously while Russia's 61-year-old Communist Party boss scuffled with his First Deputy Premier by the roadside. Mikoyan was often the butt of Khrushchev's pleasantries: "Some time ago, every Russian was complaining: no butter, no bread, no meat, and always Mikoyan."
At a shipyard, Khrushchev spotted a riveter, demanded: "Why are you using such old-fashioned methods? In Russia we use welding." At Ljubljana he rushed through a turbine factory, stopping neither to look at turbines nor to talk to workers, until he came upon a room supported by concrete buttresses. He was a real expert on concrete, he informed his guides. At home he had been fighting engineers who wanted to use steel, which was heavier and more expensive. ''Of course, you people use concrete out of necessity,'' he added. Signing guest books, Khrushchev grabbed the pen first, then turned to Bulganin. saying: "Here, Nikolai Alexandrovich, sign your name."
Life Is Short. A newsman asked Khrushchev wearily: "Aren't you getting tired?" "Tired!" said Khrushchev in an amazed tone. "Of course not. I'm a strong man." He added with a grin: "Let me tell you something. Life is short. See all you can. Hear all you can and go all you can."
Back in Belgrade. Russians and Yugoslavs met again in the Hall of Guards to sign the communiqué threshed out by their underlings. While the 1,500-word document was read aloud, Khrushchev made little faces at a couple of Russian cameramen he spotted in the crowd. When the reading finished, Tito signed for Yugoslavia, and Premier Bulganin, for the first time accorded the leading role, signed for Russia. The instant the signing was over. Khrushchev took over, leaping up to shake every hand within reach.