Less than three years before, a badly shaken and bellicose Nikita Khrushchev had flown into Warsaw only to find that he had been outmaneuvered: the new boss of Poland—which had come so close to open rebellion against the Soviet Union —was none other than Wladyslaw Gomulka, an out-of-favor Communist whom Stalin had once arrested for refusing to castigate Tito. "Traitor!" Khrushchev bellowed at him during that all-night 1956 session in the Belvedere Palace. "If you don't obey, we will crush you!"
Last week, as Khrushchev alighted from his plane to begin a ten-day visit to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the founding of Poland's people's republic, he warmly bussed Gomulka on both cheeks. "Dear Comrade . . ." his airport speech began, and it ended with, "Long live the eternal, unbreakable Soviet-Polish friendship!" Gomulka was just as unctuous, praised Khrushchev as "the sincere friend of the Polish people," a "wise, distinguished man."
Talk, Talk. It was perhaps just coincidence that Khrushchev's trip came at a time when the Big Four foreign ministers were wrestling in Geneva, but nowhere better than in Poland could Khrushchev more cockily display his power. The electric hopes of 1956 had long since been buried in Poland, and though the Roman Catholic Church and the Polish farmer enjoy a degree of freedom unparalleled behind the Iron Curtain, faithful Communist Gomulka had led his nation's policies safely back into the arms of Moscow. Now Khrushchev was back, and everywhere party workers had crowds organized to cheer and applaud him. "I am an old man," said Nikita Khrushchev, 65, rambling on in lengthy speeches, "and when I am allowed to talk, I talk."
He was at his proletarian best. In the mining town of Katowice he proudly proclaimed: "I used to work as a miner myself." insisted that no smell was more "dear to my heart" than the smell of coal dust. He felt so confident, in fact, that at one point he dared to strike a particularly sensitive spot. "Your priests," he said, "promise you happiness in heaven. We will offer you happiness here on earth. Those black-robed beggars don't want to work for it." Only when he followed up by asking whether everyone was happy was he made aware of the deadly silence in the crowd.
It was in Sosnowiec. where an International (Communist) Mine Workers' Congress was in progress, that Khrushchev hit his stride. There he promised: "Never, never, never will we launch a war against any country anywhere at any time." (He did not promise never, never, never to stay in lands that want to get rid of the Russians.) He continued in his cocky way: "I have told the Americans: 'You have no intercontinental missiles. You have missiles that can send up oranges. We have missiles that can send up tons. Imagine the kind of bombs that could be contained in our missiles.' "