The Presidency: Long Story

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John Kennedy has often fussed about an inequity in international journalism. Nikita Khrushchev, through private interviews with such traveling U.S. pundits as Walter Lippmann, Drew Pearson and the New York Times's Cyrus L. Sulzberger, has communicated his views to the U.S. newspaper public; Kennedy himself has had no such access to the Russian people. But last week the President finally got a chance, and a good one. In the first presidential interview ever granted a Russian newsman, he talked for two hours with Aleksei Adzhubei, who is both editor of Izvestia and Khrushchev's son-in-law.

The idea for the interview originated with White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who suggested it to Russian press attachés. Word eventually came back that Khrushchev liked the notion, and Adzhubei duly presented himself at Hyannisport, along with Interpreter Georgi Bolshakov, editor of the Russian English-language magazine U.S.S.R. He brought along a doll for Caroline Kennedy and, for John Jr., another doll with weighted bottom that returned upright each time it was punched over. "This doll is like the Russian people," said Adzhubei. "You can keep pushing it down, but it will always come up."

While a White House stenographer and U.S. interpreter monitored the conversation, Adzhubei and Kennedy discussed Berlin, disarmament, nuclear testing and foreign trade. At talk's end, Kennedy apologized for having let it run too long. "No," said his guest, "our people are used to reading long stories." Talking later to U.S. newsmen, Adzhubei remained in good humor. The 37-year-old editor gave a thumbnail sketch of himself: "According to the American doctrine, I met the pretty daughter of the man who was to become Premier. That's how my career started." He bristled at suggestions that his interview would be cropped in Izvestia, promised it would run in full, probably this week. ''Will the interview make a difference in the relations between the two countries?" Adzhubei was asked. "Yes," said he firmly, "for the betterment."