Six Satellite Rulers Descend on New York
TO applaud his speeches, second his motions and demonstrate "the unity of the Socialist camp," Nikita Khrushchev brings to New York this week six captive chieftains from the Bleak Lands of Double Think. The men Khrushchev chose to accompany him to the U.N. are the ones who wield real power in Russia's European satellites—though only two hold formal government offices. Of the satellite bosses, only East Germany's Walter Ulbricht is missing: he had to be left behind because his nation does not belong to the U.N. For the West, their arrival is a rare opportunity for firsthand inspection of the ruthless survival experts who rule 79,633 million enslaved Eastern Europeans. The roll call:
Albania. Premier Mehmet Shehu (pronounced Shay-who) is a 47-year-old soldier who won his military spurs in the Red-led Garibaldi Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, got his final polishing at Moscow's Voroshilov Military Academy. The son of a mullah, Shehu is the only satellite leader who speaks English, which he learned during childhood studies at Tirana's American Vocational School. Despite his soft speech and crisp good grooming, Shehu is known as the "Butcher of Albania" for his bloody suppression of anti-Communists as boss of Albania's secret police; at a 1950 meeting of the Albanian Cabinet, he reportedly shot an argumentative colleague dead over the conference table. His chief political stock in trade is his implacable hatred of Yugoslavia. Since Moscow's latest falling-out with Tito, this has apparently led Khrushchev to favor Shehu over Albania's First Party Secretary Enver Hoxha.
Bulgaria. Though he holds no official government job, Todor Zkivkov, First Secretary of Bulgaria's Communist Party, considers himself the Bulgarian Khrushchev and, like his hero, is fond of making trips into the countryside to pose as the peasants' folksy friend. In Zhivkov's case, the effect is diminished by monotone oratory and a repugnant personality. A onetime printer and World War II partisan leader, chunky Todor Zhivkov, 49. is cold, humorless and conceited. Under his leadership, Bulgaria has become the only European satellite which has successfully herded virtually all its peasants onto collective farms; it is also one of the few countries in the world that possesses fewer cattle now than in 1935. But in Khrushchev's eyes, Zhivkov's unquestioning loyalty to Moscow apparently makes up for his notorious lack of intelligence.