Communists: The Afro-Asian Arab

It was quite an entourage. Accompanied by his family, his Foreign Minister, the editors of Pravda and Izvestia, and star performers from the Bolshoi Ballet and Moscow Circus, Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Egypt last week. His stated purpose for the trip was the inauguration of the Aswan High Dam's first stage—a project into which Russia has pumped $272 million and at least six engineers' lives.

In fact Khrushchev's first visit to Africa was a shrewdly timed riposte to Red China's Premier Chou Enlai, who spent two months stumping Africa last year. Chou's blatantly racist pitch sought to raise what Moscow called "a great Chinese wall" of prejudice between white and colored races in hopes of driving Khrushchev's brand of Communism out of Africa. To demonstrate the practical difference between the rival camps, Nikita came to Egypt bearing gifts: $164 million in aid and credits above the $400 million Moscow had already allocated. "We Russians," runs Moscow's current line, "are Afro-Asian Arabs too."

After touring Alexandria's narrow flag-festooned streets in an open Cadillac, Khrushchev and Egypt's President Nasser boarded an air-conditioned railroad car for a tumultuous whistle-stop tour of the Nile Delta. The fellahin fell all over their beaming visitor, and when the train pulled into Cairo's Ramses Station, repainted for the first time since it was built at the turn of the century, half a million Egyptians lined the route to the Kubbeh Palace. It was the largest crowd in Cairo since the revolution of 1952, and as Nikita dropped off to sleep in the gingerbread edifice where fat King "Freddy" Farouk used to frolic, he could rest assured that he was the most loved visitor to Egypt since Antony barged in on Cleopatra.