POLAND: The Confidence Man

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"Look, a Capitalist!" The West, he snorted, was insisting on free elections in the two Germanys, "but we point out that there are more people in West Germany and that therefore they would win." For Khrushchev, this seemed to settle the matter of free elections. It was this sort of logic that led him to his conclusion: eventually the capitalists will all end up in museums. "We will look at them as today we look at the remains of prehistoric monsters and say, 'Look, that was a capitalist!'" Recently, he added, he had been visited by Averell Harriman, who was defeated for the governorship of New York by a Rockefeller. "What is the difference to the workers," said Khrushchev, "between a Rockefeller and a Harriman?"

But his main target of the week—and one that was calculated to appeal to the Poles—was West Germany. In fact, Khrushchev got his only show of genuine enthusiasm on his Polish tour when he rolled through the haunted, once-devastated "Western territories," formerly German but now Polish, and enthusiastically sided with Polish claims. Said Khrushchev, as he set the theme in Katowice: "Adenauer seems to follow in the footsteps of Hitler, who is now decaying in the earth. I say to Adenauer: 'If you try to attack the Socialist countries, you won't be able to leave your own hole in the ground.' " Then up spoke Wladyslaw Gomulka, the perfect host: "Adenauer strives to win France for his policies. Our new friend President de Gaulle may be compared to a dog who barks loudly, but is nevertheless only a toothless dog."

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