(2 of 9)
And Khrushchev's peaceful coexistence has always had its hard underside; after all, the summit conference was precipitated in the first place by his threats to West Berlin. In Paris last week, Rodion Malinovsky was an overt reminder of the brute force that Russia's Communists command if they chose to turn tough. He was also the visible symbol of one of the forces that press upon Khrushchev.
Iron Man. At 61, Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky is deprecated by many Soviet officers as a political marshal and a Khrushchev stooge. Gross (5 ft. 7 in., nearly 300 lbs.), diabetic and slow-moving, he retains the abrupt manner of a noncom. But over a 40-year career in the Red army, he has combined a talent for political survival with an impressive combat record.
Son of a Ukrainian laborer, Malinovsky quit school at twelve to go to work as a shop messenger in Odessa. Too young (15) for enlistment in the Czar's army when World War I broke out, he stowed away with a unit leaving for the German front, was adopted as a mascot. Within a year, he was promoted to corporal, won the St. George's Cross, and was wounded.
When he recovered, Malinovsky was assigned to the Iron Division, a crack Czarist outfit sent to France as a symbol of Allied solidarity. In France, Malinovsky acquired respect for British troops—"Ah, those British! Always smoking their pipes, even during an attack!"—and a sneaking liking for Americans: "The Russians and the Americans got along together, especially when it came to having a drink or smashing glasses in a café." But his fondest memories are of "those French girls." In Paris last week, he confided that the three phrases he could still manage in both English and French were: "Good morning," "Good night," and "I love you."
Model of a Marxist. Malinovsky's nostalgic tone vanishes when he recalls what happened when news of Russia's 1917 revolution reached the Iron Division. "Our camp," he says, "was encircled by Allied troops. The French tried to pacify us with artillery fire." Finally, in 1919, the remnants of the Iron Division were shipped to Vladivostok, then in the hands of the White armies. Some foreign military men still cherish a suspicion that Corporal Malinovsky put in some time with the White forces before joining the Bolshevik armies in Siberia as a machine-gun instructor.
But once he joined the Reds, Malinovsky rapidly became the very model of a modern Marxist officer. He was sent to the Frunze Academy, Russia's equivalent of the Command and General Staff College, acquired a wife, four children, and more important, a Communist Party card. Somehow the purges that all but shattered the Soviet officer corps in the '30s never touched him. Stepping into the shoes of executed superiors, he was a one-star general commanding a cavalry corps when World War II broke out.