Candy, Tea & Vodka

SPOKESMAN

Handsome, grinny Eric Johnston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and No. 1 evangelist for free enterprise, last week continued to baffle (and please) the Russian people. To young Eric (47), this trip to Russia was obviously a major highlight in his rocketing career (TIME, March 27). Enthusiastically he called it "a grand whirl."

With the same smooth manner that once sold vacuum cleaners at hotcake speed, Businessman Johnston heartily backslapped his way among the proletariat. Flashing his dazzling smile, he shook hands like a polished Wendell Willkie-- with workers in an American-equipped ball-bearing plant, in the giant Stalin Auto Works, in an airplane-engine factory. At a press conference he talked about the booming U.S. economy, reaffirmed his belief that there need be no postwar unemployment, showed correspondents newsreels of himself in Russia.

In return Salesman Eric got a heavy dose of Russian sales technique. Workers at the Red October candy factory gave him huge, fancy ribbon-tied boxes of chocolates. Pastry cooks gave him gooey cakes. Soviet bigwigs showered him with teas, dinners, parties, promised him a rare, general's-eye-view of the front. By week's end healthy, energetic Johnston had abandoned his announced firm policy of refusing all drinks "on doctor's orders." At a luncheon on a collective fur farm he drank toasts in vodka, an hour later began yelling "Whoo-hoo!"

No one could tell yet who had sold what to whom.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.