Russia: The Adventurer

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In the wake of Russia's retreat from Cuba, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan rose in the House of Commons to deliver his reasoned judgment on the outcome. It was, he declared, "one of the great turning points of history."

This judgment may have been somewhat inflated, but the event does have momentous significance. Years ago, the West had forced a Russian withdrawal in Iran, stopped Communism in Korea, pushed it back in Europe with the Marshall Plan, frustrated its 1948 siege of Berlin with the airlift. All these occasions were milestones in the persistence of free men to remain free. But these tests came before both sides had large nuclear arsenals, and for the most part did not involve a direct, point-blank confrontation between Washington and Moscow. Now, in an ultimate showdown, Russia had given way.

Nikita Khrushchev is a resourceful, imaginative and tough opponent who obviously has a great many tricks left in the back of his shrewd peasant mind. But, except for those who seem constitutionally unable to believe that the Russians can ever make mistakes, there is an almost worldwide consensus that in Cuba Khrushchev had overextended himself, and that he has been forced back in a test of will with the U.S.

Satellite Procession. Khrushchev was busy all week trying to prove precisely the opposite. To the Russian people, who were kept almost totally in the dark about their government's attempt to plant rockets 6,000 miles from Soviet soil, Khrushchev was playing the role of the stern defender of peace on the side of plucky little Cuba. But it was not so easy to fob off Communism's professionals.

One by one, the Red satellite leaders began trooping into Moscow. First came Czechoslovakia's President Antonin Novotny, who had heavily invested in Cuba. Next came Bulgaria's Todor Zhevkov, and East Germany's Walter Ulbricht, who has been waiting since 1958 for Khrushchev to live up to his promise to throw the U.S., Britain and France out of Berlin. At week's end Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka joined the procession. Each in his own way, the satellite leaders were bound to ask the same question that preoccupied the rest of the world: Why had Khrushchev got himself involved in the Caribbean adventure?

Moscow often had tried rocket diplomacy of sorts in the past. Khrushchev once told Greece that he would rain nuclear destruction on the Acropolis, and he as good as promised Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that West Germany would become a "funeral pyre." But these were only what diplomats have come to call "missile letters." Never before had the Kremlin risked using missiles themselves to push its policies. It had not permitted Warsaw Pact allies to have offensive missiles, and had never, in fact, dared allow them off the soil of the Soviet Union. Why had Khrushchev done so now in the Caribbean, virtually an American lake thousands of miles from the nearest point of direct Soviet interest?