The Big Toe

The cautious man, about to plunge into uncertain waters, first tests the temperature with an exploratory toe. Last week, playing the part of an affably pudgy big toe, Soviet ex-Premier Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov arrived in London to test the temperature of British hospitality as diplomatic advance man for the forthcoming visit of Communist Bigwigs Bulganin and Khrushchev.

Ostensibly, Georgy had come in his new capacity as Russia's electricity commissar to inspect British power plants, but the truer reason for his trip became clear when the Soviet embassy announced that Malenkov would go along on only a few of the score of trips arranged for the Russian technicians who came to England with him. Instead of peering at generators in the provinces, Commissar Malenkov planned to remain in London generating a few millivolts of good will to break the ice for his bosses.

A jittery Scotland Yard had done its best to keep the visitor as isolated as possible from the madding, and potentially maddened, crowds that might gather to meet the former Stalin henchman, but Malenkov was in no mood to play the wallflower. From the moment that he stepped from the plane at London's airport, doffing a broad-brimmed grey fedora and waving an amiable hand, Malenkov was plainly ready to charm the masses. Thanks to the Yard, there were no masses present, but Georgy made up for their lack by pumping the hands of a cordon of British dignitaries and aiming a volley of telling smiles into the distant lenses of a battery of news photographers. At last, safely ensconced in the sleek, black Russian embassy limousine, he leaped out twice to shake some overlooked hands.

A Man's a Man. Tooling along the Great West Road, Malenkov's car passed a loudspeaker van which blared: "Tell Khrushchev and Bulganin they will not be welcome here. We don't want Red murderers in this country!" But Georgy, if he could understand its message, paid it no mind. Still smiling broadly when he pulled up at the Russian embassy in London's "Millionaire's Row," he chucked the chin of one embassy tot who was waiting in the driveway to greet him, patted the head of another, aimed a last wave and grin at the cameras, and disappeared inside.

That afternoon the Soviet power chief and his British counterpart, Lord Citrine, exchanged reminiscences over claret* and quotes from roughhewn Scots Poet Bobbie Burns. It turned out, in fact, that Malenkov had a Soviet edition of Burns in Russian right in his pocket. "A man's a man for a' that, for a' that an' a' that . . . The honest man, tho e'er sae puir, is king of men for a' that." Malenkov read in Russian, while an interpreter provided the Scots burr. "A very friendly man," said Lord Citrine later, "with a deep grasp of English cultural life."

On his second day in town, still carefully guarded by a detachment of two motorcycle policemen and a squad car, Malenkov drove through the West End to see the sights. As they approached Trafalgar Square, the busiest crossroads in London, the police swung around one way as had been planned, but instead of following them, Malenkov's ZIS swung off the other way. There was a squealing of brakes as his guards discovered the wile, but when at last they caught up, there was Malenkov, unprotected in the middle of London's surging crowds. He had been told, he said, to be sure not to miss the Lord Nelson column.

A Man as Nice. In attempting to isolate Malenkov, British authority seemed as fearful of too much friendliness as it was of too little. As the visiting Russian, nattily turned out in a light blue topcoat, emerged into Winsley Street after a visit to the British Electricity Authority headquarters, a surging crowd was gathered in the street to see him. Scores of female garmentworkers hung out of the windows across the street to catch a glimpse. When Malenkov raised his hand and grinned his broadest, the walls echoed with a welcoming cheer. "He was so clean-cut," one sewing-machine operator told a reporter later, "he looked like an American." "Like Charles Laughton," gushed another, "only younger and more jovial."

Not only the Russian leaders and the British police were anxiously trying to gauge the forthcoming reception for

"Khrush and Bulgy" (or K. and B.. as the British press has taken to calling them). Last week Britain's highest Roman Catholic prelate, Bernard Cardinal Griffin, in a pastoral letter read in all Roman Catholic churches in England and Wales, urged British Catholics to "act with restraint and dignity" during the Russians' visit. but to set aside a day of prayer for Christians persecuted behind the Iron Curtain.

-Malenkov, said a Soviet spokesman solemnly, does not drink vodka.

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