MAN OF THE YEAR: Up From the Plenum

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"Once upon a time," said Nikita, "there were three men in a prison. They were a Social Democrat, an anarchist and a humble little Jew—a half-educated,little fellow named Pinya. They decided to elect a cell leader who would watch over distribution of food, tea and tobacco. The anarchist, a big, burly fellow, was against such a lawful process as electing authority. To show his contempt for law and order, he proposed that insignificant little Pinya be elected. They elected Pinya. Things went well, and they decided to escape. The Social Democrat had a good intellect; he made the plan to tunnel. The brawny anarchist did the digging. But they realized that the man to go first through the tunnel would be shot at by the guard. They all turned to the big, brave anarchist, but he was afraid to go. Suddenly, poor little Pinya drew himself up and said: 'Comrades, you elected me by democratic process as your leader, therefore I will go first.'

"Little Pinya, that's me.

"No matter how humble a man's beginning," he added, explaining his own fable, "he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected."

Counter-Revolution. After the glum December Plenum, Nikita set to work. Like the practical man he is, he recognized that his liberalization had gone too far. In November 1956, when Hungary was fighting for its freedom, Nikita had lurched up to U.S. Ambassador Charles Bohlen at a Moscow party and said: "I want to talk to you about Suez." "I want to talk to you about Hungary," replied Bohlen. "What are you going to do about it?" Khrushchev exploded. Pumping his fist in a series of short uppercuts, he shouted: "We will put in more troops—and more troops—and more troops—and more troops—until we have finished them."

To patch the dike of Communist unity, he charged off to Prague, to East Berlin, to Bucharest, received one satellite delegation after another in the Kremlin. He offered loans here, concessions there. "You like workers' councils? Take them. We won't criticize you," he said in a speech to the Czechs.

Cracking down on the critics who had risen in the thaw after his own attacks on Stalin, he persuaded Gomulka to stifle the young bloods who had stirred Poland. "We are all Stalinists," he announced. "God grant that every Communist be able to fight as Stalin fought." ("We say the name of God," explains Khrushchev, "but that is only a habit. We are atheists.") To Westerners who predicted that his destalinization program could be used to topple the Soviet empire, he shouted: "You will no more succeed at this than you will succeed in seeing your ear without a mirror."

But in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, he told the hard-lining bosses of those satrapies that they no longer had anything to fear from the Kremlin. "As the saying goes," he told the Czechs, "trust in God and look out for yourself. When you walk among dogs, don't forget to carry a stick. After all, that is what a hound has teeth for, to bite when he feels like it."