(7 of 20)
Khrushchev said on another occasion, "Andrei Andreyevich is an excellent diplomat and tactician; he knows negotiations from A to Z. But as an ideologist and theoretician he's rather poor. He has little taste for theorizing. But we're working on him. We'll make something of him yet."
One evening Khrushchev, who as usual had been drinking heavily, decided to have some fun with Nikolai Podgorny, who at the time held Khrushchev's old job as party boss of the Ukraine and later became a member of the Politburo. Khrushchev turned to Podgorny. "Why don't you dance a gopak for us? I miss Ukrainian dances and songs."
The gopak is a strenuous national dance, performed in a squatting position, with the men rapidly kicking one leg out and then the other, all the time moving around a large circle. Podgorny looked at Khrushchev in amazement. He was in his 60s. Khrushchev egged him on. Podgorny realized his leader was not joking. With obvious reluctance, he stood up and awkwardly bobbed up and down a few times. Khrushchev clapped loudly and praised Podgorny. "Well done!" he said. "You are in the right place there in Kiev."
Emboldened by the gregarious informality aboard ship, I decided to risk voicing my concerns about our latest approach to disarmament. The promise of "serious negotiations" on arms reductions had drawn me to the Foreign * Ministry, but now there was a shift away from realistic talks toward the propaganda program of general and complete disarmament. Cautiously, I suggested to Khrushchev that propaganda could not replace the real talks needed to make progress in stopping the arms race.
I was somewhat surprised that he heard me out. Then he said that there could be two levels of work in the field: his campaign for general and complete disarmament as a propaganda effort with a foundation of real negotiations on concrete, if limited steps. "Every vegetable has its season," he said. "Never forget the appeal that the idea of disarmament has in the outside world. All you have to do is say, 'I'm in favor of it,' and that pays big dividends."
Admitting with a grin that he expected neither the West nor the Soviet Union to disarm completely, he added, "A seductive slogan is the most powerful political instrument. The Americans don't understand that. They only hurt themselves in struggling against the idea of general and complete disarmament. What they are doing is as futile as Don Quixote's fighting the windmills." Propaganda and true negotiations, he said, should be not contradictory but complementary.
After we sailed south to avoid the storm, Khrushchev began to spend more time on deck. Once I saw him standing alone, leaning on the ship's railing and looking through his binoculars at the bright ocean. Just as I approached him his arm slipped and he lost his balance. I held him up. He turned to me and said with a gay sparkle in his eyes, "If I were to fall overboard that wouldn't be a calamity. Right now we aren't too far from Cuba, and they'd probably receive me there better than the Americans will in New York.