Europe: The Grandest Tour

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Napoleonic Parallels. De Gaulle's visit began auspiciously enough with the warmest reception accorded any Western visitor in Soviet history. Seven MIG fighters locked in wingtip-to-wingtip formation escorted De Gaulle's plane to its landing. As the general deplaned in khakis and kepi, the band struck up La Marseillaise and a battery of antiaircraft cannon boomed 21 times—so loud and near that bystanders felt the breath of the guns. The honor guard was resplendent in grey, gold and red, and their rifle butts hit the ground with such popping precision that De Gaulle winced involuntarily. "Vive la France!" cried the thousand "workers" assembled to greet De Gaulle as he plunged among them shaking hands.

On the ride into Moscow with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny, De Gaulle followed the old Kaluga Road (now Lenin Avenue) down which Napoleon retreated under Czarist cannonfire in 1812. Last week the route was lined by 800,000 Muscovites waving paper tricolors and shouting "Druzhba!" (friendship). The Napoleonic parallel was completed when De Gaulle was escorted to a spacious apartment within the Kremlin walls, the first Western leader ever so honored and the first Frenchman to sleep there since Bonaparte.

Questions of Understanding. Like Bonaparte, De Gaulle quickly discovered that the mere invasion of Russia —however glorious—is not tantamount to victory. On the night of his arrival, after a dinner of caviar, cucumber soup, and jellied deer's-tongue, De Gaulle struck his main theme: "France would like to see the harmful spell [of the cold war] broken and, at least as far as she is concerned, a beginning of new relations toward relaxation, harmony and cooperation with the East European states. Paris, in talking of this to the East, necessarily addresses itself to Moscow. The re-establishment of Europe into a fertile whole, instead of being paralyzed by a sterile division, remains France's primary aim. Thus, the understanding between hitherto antagonistic states is above all, according to the French, a European problem." Next morning, in political talks with Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev, De Gaulle learned that French "understanding" is not the same as Russian.

Ensconced among the green malachite columns and crystal chandeliers of Catherine the Great's throne room, Brezhnev launched into a lengthy, violent diatribe against West Germany—a "revanchist" state, which 25 years ago last week had invaded Russia, that has not yet accepted the postwar Oder-Neisse frontier and, moreover, now demands nuclear weapons. French aides noted signs of Gaullist irritation: the general's nods came with such regularity that he resembled a ticking time bomb and his hands clenched tight on the carved Romanov griffins of his chair. De Gaulle's response would have pleased his NATO allies if he had uttered it in their presence. "It is necessary," he said when Brezhnev finally finished, "to proceed by stages. The future lasts a long time, and blocs do not dissolve overnight. It is up to Russia to give an example of rapprochement." As to Brezhnev's demand that the West "accept a framework that guarantees European security" and recognize East Germany in the process, De Gaulle rebutted brutally: "East Germany is only an artificial creation of yours."