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In the hot afternoon sun some 15,000 New Yorkers and tourists jammed the sidewalks outside Manhattan's new showplace Coliseum one day last week, while more than 50 cops held the bulging lines. Soon a string of limousines pulled up. Out stepped the President of the U.S., the Vice President, Commerce Secretary Lewis Strauss, Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon, U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and a retinue of other officials. Waiting to greet them at the Coliseum's main door was a barrel-stout man with iron-grey, curly hair and a broad smile: Frol Romanovich Kozlov, 50, First Deputy Premier of the U.S.S.R.. the Kremlin's No. 2 man. sent by Nikita Khrushchev to officiate at the opening of Russia's flashy exhibition of science, technology and culture (TIME. July 6).
The ceremony was far more than a hands-across-the-sea tribute to an elaborate display of cultural and industrial wares. It was a milestone in the new day of person-to-person diplomacy, and both sides were aware of the high stakes. President Eisenhower had shifted his schedule to fly up to meet Kozlov. because 1) he was genuinely interested in seeing what manner of $10 million show the Russians had opened at the U.S. front door, and 2) he was more interested in seeing that Vice President Nixon gets the same kind of reciprocal top-level treatment when he opens the U.S. exposition in Moscow on July 25. For his part, genial Frol Kozlov, as Khrushchev's understudy, was out to get a look at the Soviet Union's chief competitor and potential enemy (his last known trip outside the U.S.S.R.: to Hungary, with Khrushchev, in April 1958), and in the process to make whatever propaganda he could.
Icebreakers & Warmth. For a stranger in a strange land with strange dignitaries, Kozlov took over with hostly firmness, attached himself to the President with only a young interpreter bobbing along between them. Kozlov, who speaks no English, boomed out his small talk, and the interpreter translated softly. Ike small-talked back as they headed for the escalator. He recalled his visit to Russia after V-E day in 1945. "We visited the Leningrad trenches, and then we visited the house of a very famous Russian poet —but I forgot his name." "Pushkin?" offered the interpreter. "Yes, Pushkin," recalled Ike. The President was guided to the exhibit's centerpiece, a display of the shiny models of the three Russian Sputniks and a replica of the Lunik nose cone. "Just think of the millions and millions of miles," he muttered politely. At the model display of the Soviet nuclear icebreaker Lenin, Kozlov shouted in Ike's ear: "That's what we use atomic power for." The President, author of his own wide-ranging atoms-for-peace program, smiled and replied: "I've been preaching that for six years."
Orange Juice & Wine. Kozlov was still talking animatedly when they settled down in a glass-enclosed lounge for a breather. The Russians offered some champagne, but Ike courteously turned it down. He took an orange juice, and so did Kozlov. But the Russians still persisted with the champagne, and Ike politely accepted "just a little,'' was handed a full glass.