Cold War: Lunch in Siberia

Every once in a while, Nikita Khrushchev leaves official Moscow for a tour of the hinterlands, where he dispenses earthy proverbs and lofty advice to spur lagging Soviet agricultural production. Last week, on his latest swing through the boondocks of Central Asia, Khrushchev again demonstrated that to the folks down on the farm he is still one of the muzhiks.

Addressing cotton growers in Tashkent, Khrushchev complained that although sown acreage had increased, production had decreased. "But those with low yields don't look for a smaller spoon at the table," he said. "Maybe such people should be given short pants and even wear them in winter so everyone could see that they hadn't grown up enough to wear normal-size pants. That's a joke, of course, comrades,'' added Jolly Nikita, "but I would like you to find a grain of truth in that joke."

Changing Faces. In Kazakhstan, key to Khrushchev's grandiose scheme to plant grain in the virgin lands southeast of the Urals, the visitor from Moscow angrily changed faces, interrupted a regional party leader who reported that the grain harvest had been "reduced" this year by shouting: "That would be expressing yourself mildly. You did not reduce it, you wrecked it!"

Still combining pleasantries with threats, Khrushchev turned from local farm conditions to international politics, met for luncheon near the booming Siberian industrial city of Novosibirsk with Finnish President Urho K. Kekkonen, who had traveled 2,380 miles by auto, train and jet to find out whether his country's delicate neutrality was about to be shattered.

Soviet pressure against Finland had mounted steadily since last month, when Moscow demanded joint military talks to meet the alleged threat of West German "aggression." As Tass reported the Siberian table talk, Khrushchev told the Finnish leader that, "before it is too late," the frontier of Finland and the Soviet Union must be fortified against the NATO partners West Germany, Denmark and Norway. "All-round cooperation between our two countries." continued Khrushchev, "requires firm confidence that Finland will abide tomorrow, as it does today, by its chosen foreign policy line"—strict neutrality based on friendship with Russia.

Changing Tunes. The ominous-sounding speech suggested that Russia would demand a degree of political or military surrender from the Finns. But next day Khrushchev relaxed his muscle, granted Kekkonen's request for an indefinite postponement of the joint military consultations. In the meantime, Kekkonen's chief rival for the presidency in next year's elections withdrew from the race, assuring Kekkonen of another six-year term as chief of state. This may have been the Kremlin's goal all along, for in the past Khrushchev has usually found Kekkonen's nimble neutrality satisfactory enough.