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Khrushchev's gravest error, in his successors' eyes, lay in conducting the Soviet-Red Chinese ideological dispute as if it were a barroom brawl. He was so busy argy-bargying with Peking that he completely failed to recognize China's accelerated scientific progress, thus let Mao Tse-tung gain valuable prestige by exploding his bomb without warning.
The Neighbors. So where was Nikita? Moscow gossip placed him in a hospital at Rublevo, 15 miles from the capital, suffering from "blood pressure." However, Communists maintained that Nikita and Nina had retreated to their old, four-room apartment at No. 3 Granovsky Street, a section that compares unfavorably with, say, Manhattan's West Side around Amsterdam Avenue and 81st Street. But the social life should be interesting. Among other tenants officially housed in the building are two potentates purged by Khrushchev, former Premier Vyacheslav Molotov and Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov, as well as several comrades who gave K. the push, including Suslov and Kosygin.
According to the Italians, Nikita has been granted a monthly pension of 1,000 rubles ($1,111 at the official exchange rate). Not so lucky was Son-in-Law Adzhubei, who had been stripped of his influential job as Izvestia's editor.
Despite a glittering new job offer—deputy manager of Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, a party blat deep in Khrushchev's virgin lands—Aleksei decided to hang around. After all, Wife Rada still had her job as an editor of a Moscow scientific journal.
It was obvious that Moscow's new leaders felt they could not immediately eliminate Khrushchev from the Moscow scene. His popularity in both the Communist world and the West would not permit such a move, even if the new regime had the stomach for it.
Communists the world over were still tut-tutting over Nikita's great fall. So.
for that matter, was Angelo Litrico, a non-Communist tailor in Rome. Alas for Angelo, he was busy making two new suits for Khrushchev the day of his ouster. A single-breasted black and a double-breasted grey, custom-made for Nikita's projected visit to West Germany. The folks on No. 3 Granovsky Street may never get to see them, nor the tailor his money.