Misunderstood Laughter

Three days before the big picnic, the well-fed technocrats of Communism filed into the Assembly Hall of the Great Palace of the Kremlin for another of their little practice sessions in the simulation of democracy. The 1,300-odd Communist Party Deputies were gathered in special session to hear goateed Premier Bulganin read a 10,000-word report on the summit conference at Geneva, to cheer at the right places, to follow it with a day's "debate" in which everyone would cheer or deplore what Bulganin cheered or deplored, after which everyone would vote yes.

The proceedings are so stylized that they are sterilized: in the middle of Bulganin's long reading, Khrushchev got to chatting to other members of the Presidium, and Molotov even got up and left the room for a while.

Vast Concealment. Pausing at regular intervals to accept the endorsement of his hearers, Bulganin gently praised the West and the new atmosphere, but for the most part emphasized the unchanged stand of the Soviet Union on all foreign-policy questions, particularly Germany and the satellite states. Then he came to the point where he was bound to give an answer to the forthright proposal of President Eisenhower that both countries exchange blueprints and aerial reconnaissance.

Said Bulganin: "With due respect to the striving to find a solution to the complicated problem of international control . . . one cannot but say at the same time that the real effectiveness of such measures would not be great. During unofficial talks with the leaders of the U.S. Government, we straightforwardly declared that aero-photography cannot give the expected results, because both countries stretch over vast territories in which, if desired, one can conceal anything . . ."

Here Bulganin, dressed in a pale grey summer suit, drew back slightly from the carved oak podium. In the box behind him, where sit the top committeemen from whom others take their cue, someone laughed. Others joined, and a gale of laughter swept through the white and gold chamber.

It is, of course, a grim, ironic joke in Russia that the vast hinterland conceals numberless prison camps, slave-labor projects, and an abysmally low standard of living among all but party people. These were experts in that kind of concealment, and they laughed appreciatively at Bulganin's easy reference to the "vast territories in which, if desired, one can conceal anything." But it was a guffaw all too reminiscent of Vishinsky's famous blunder ("I could hardly sleep all last night . . . because I kept laughing," said Vishinsky of U.S. peace proposals in 1951). Newsmen spread the story across the world's wires: Russians laugh down Eisenhower's peace proposal.

The Russians quickly realized their mistake: in the eyes of the world, disarmament is no laughing matter. Next day Bulganin made a surprise reappearance at the podium. He complained that his statement about the unworkability of the Eisenhower proposal had been widely misunderstood in the world press, for the Russians were considering it "in all seriousness."

The way was left open to further discussion of Ike's plan, the new amiability was back on the track, and the boys could get set for the picnic.

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