Fist for a Fist

Five days of chilling British indifference had made their smiles sickly and their tempers short. Last week, while Premier Nikolai Bulganin kept up a covering barrage of pleasant generalities, Nikita Khrushchev dropped all pretense of geniality, and got down to business. Comrade Khrushchev's new theme: Russia is a powerful, thriving and scientifically advanced nation, willing and able to trade profitably with the West, but strong enough to do without if necessary.

Ours Are Bigger. Khrushchev deployed his evidence with skill. All week long, three sleek Russian jet airliners whooshed in and out of London Airport on courier missions. He sent Soviet Plane Designer Andrei Tupolev to look at the Britannia, Britain's latest turboprop liner, and Tupolev emerged remarking: "An impressive airplane, but we are building a bigger turboprop, which will carry 170 passengers." He sent Soviet Atomic Expert Igor V. Kurchatov to Harwell to deliver a lecture that left British scientists much impressed (see SCIENCE).

Khrushchev himself laid out the theme in a shrewdly conceived speech delivered at the opening of the British Industries Fair in Birmingham. He began by flexing Russia's muscles. He had noticed that in the streets there were "a few, a very few, placards against us and a few cries. One man even shook his fist at me. My return gesture was this [Khrushchev shook his own fist], and we both understood each other."

The crowd laughed, but Khrushchev's eyes narrowed.

"I would remind that man," he went on, "of the fact that attempts have been made in the past to speak to us in those terms. After the October Revolution in our country there was a landing by the British, by the Americans, by the French at Odessa and by the Japanese at Vladivostok, but then the Russian people made an effort and cleared them all out.

"Later on Hitler shook a clenched fist at us. He is in his grave now. Is it not time that we become more intelligent and not shake our fists at each other? As a matter of fact, fist fighting requires much less brains than trading."

Then Khrushchev launched into his main theme: "Our trade would hardly flourish if it were based on the sale of crabs on our side, and the sale of herring on yours. Though I do believe that our crabs are very good. And your herring is wonderful, particularly if you eat it with a bit of vodka. But that is very little if one wants to develop really large-scale trade."

In a word, Khrushchev wanted the strategic list abolished. "We don't ask you to sell us guns or warships. As a matter of fact, if you want, we could sell you some of our cruisers because they very soon get out of date."

Who's in Front? Russia, in fact, was just as far ahead in warmaking skills as the West. Aircraft? He cited Tupolev's planes.

Hydrogen bombs? Said Khrushchev:"It remains a fact that we were the first to explode the hydrogen bomb from an airplane. Americans are only intending to do so. Their previous explosion was not that of a hydrogen bomb but of a hydrogen installation."

Guided missiles? "We can compete there too. I am certain that we shall quite soon have a ballistic missile with a hydrogen bomb that can fall anywhere in the world."