Foreign News: The New Line

In a 2½hour broadcast from the Kremlin last week, Nikita Khrushchev gave the Russian people his version of the fiasco in Paris. By the time he had finished, the outlines of Moscow's post-summit policy toward the U.S. were clear. The new line: tough talk for the record but, on all except the top level, business more or less as usual.

Though Nikita's tone toward Ike was still savage, it was less so than in Paris. "Even now," said Nikita, "I have the impression that he really wants peace . . . but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and Eisenhower will surely get there." Having consigned Ike to hell, Khrushchev then picked up a gambit from Ike's most unsporting Western critics (see cut). He still didn't believe, he said, that Ike had foreknowledge of the U-2 flight: "Everybody knows that the President of the United States has two duties: the first is to play golf and the second is to be President, and golf playing is more important."

When he discussed the prospects for another summit, Khrushchev threw in a demand clearly intended as a sop to the Stalinists in Moscow and Peking. The next summit, said he, should include such Asian nations as India, Indonesia—and Red China. But significantly downplayed was the old threat to use Communist East Germany as a lever to pry the Western powers out of Berlin. Nikita boasted that the rocket which allegedly shot down the U-2 had negated the bomber-based strategy of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. But he added that Russia had already suspended production of some of its other rockets, "for they are not cucumbers; they cannot be eaten, and only so many are necessary to repel aggression."

In the Labs. Stripped of its ritual insults, this came down to a declaration of intention not to rock the international boat. Lesser Russians at lower levels reflected the boss's decision. Flying into Moscow at midweek—at almost the same moment that dour Andrei Gromyko was railing against the U.S. in the Security Council—flop-haired Pianist Van Cliburn found himself showered with cheers and bouquets by excited Russian bobby-soxers. Next day in a conversation with U.S. Violinist Isaac Stern, who last week wound up a concert tour of Russia, Soviet Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva talked expansively of even greater cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Russia. Nor was this mere cocktail party courtesy; despite the U2, five Soviet scientists were still touring U.S. thermonuclear facilities last week, and an exchange party of U.S. high-energy physicists was busily poking through Soviet labs.

No Echoes. Diplomatically, too, as the C-47 affair (see below) revealed, the Russians seemed intent on demonstrating reasonableness. At Geneva the U.S., British and Russian delegates agreed to resume sessions of the19-month-old nuclear test-ban conference. In a scrupulously businesslike session, Soviet Delegate Semyon ("Scratchy") Tsarapkin even gave his blessing to U.S. underground nuclear explosions designed to improve detection techniques, provided that Moscow got "firm safeguards" that the tests would be strictly nonmilitary. With mingled surprise and satisfaction, U.S. Delegate James Wadsworth commented at meeting's end: "No echoes of Paris at all."