He called them "gentlemen capital ists," and only occasionally suggested that all capitalists are really robbers and cheats. Communist delegations from all over the world crowded into Moscow for the 46th anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution. But Nikita Khrushchev devoted a total of seven hours to a traveling group of 20 top American executives (plus one educator) as if he found more challenge in their company.
On a European tour sponsored by TIME, the visitors first called on K. at the Kremlin. In the Oval Room, where the Soviet Council of Ministers usually meets, the callers sat in rows of small desks while he answered questions from behind a huge barricade of a table. He asked them to drop in at his anniversary reception the following day, and they in turn asked him to a party of their own (he promptly accepted). Throughout, Khrushchev put on one of those marathon propaganda performances at which he is by turns hearty, earthy, funny, menacing, seemingly frank, and totally impervious to argument.
He sounded his usual note of ritualistic optimism, vowed that in seven years—no more and no less—Russia will overtake the U.S. economically. To Henry R. Roberts, president of Connecticut General Life, "he acted like a corporation president who "is in trouble with his board of directors and is trying to get out of his dilemma by making aggressive and boastful statements."
Murder at the Wall. Apart from claiming victory in last week's Berlin incident and deploring the difficulties on the wheat deal (see THE NATION), Khrushchev suggested that Russia had not really given up on the moon race, at least not for the long run, and he almost teasingly hinted that the Sino-Soviet split might be mended one of these days: "The more you rejoice about the differences, the greater your disappointment will be."
Again and again he made a pitch for trade with the U.S., repeatedly pointed out that the U.S.'s allies trade far more heavily with Russia than the U.S. itself. Actually, as these businessmen well knew, Russia has few gold reserves to pay for U.S. products and little in the way of exportable goods that might interest the U.S. When National Cash Register President Robert S. Oelman asked what products Russia could offer, Khrushchev cited U.S. trade in machine tools with West Germany. "If we have managed to build a rocket no worse than anything you have in the U.S., then I am sure we will be able to build machine tools in no way inferior to anything the West Germans can build."
Moving from foreign trade to foreign relations, Khrushchev pulled out all the "peaceful coexistence" clichés, lost his aplomb (but not his temper) only when Chauncey W. Cook, president of General Foods, asked "Why is it necessary to build a Berlin Wall and shoot people down if they try to get over?"
"A state frontier is a state frontier," Khrushchev replied. "And every state, whenever its borders are violated, shoots the violators."
"Not to keep people in, we don't," snapped Cook.