Communists: Gitche Gumee Revisited

On matters cultural, Nikita Khrushchev is simply not with it; modern art gives him indigestion, and he regards jazz as so much noise. Last week the Kremlin's Red Square reached all the way back to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow trying to convert The Song of Hiawatha into a Communist ballad for disarmament without inspection or controls.

Addressing 2,000 delegates from 100 countries who assembled in the tepee—Moscow's Palace of Congresses—for a Red-sponsored peace conference. Khrushchev recalled that Longfellow summoned "the tribes of men" with the plea: Bury your war-clubs and your weapons...