The Bland Advance Man

To the very end of his hectic three-week power-plant tour, pudgy little Georgy Malenkov kept smiling his guileless-looking kewpie doll's smile, fascinating working girls, and murmuring sweet nothings to every Briton within handshaking range of his far-flying ZIS limousine. "Such a charmer," said the Daily Herald. "Irresistible," admitted a woman from the Tory Daily Sketch. Last week, between sending a Russian perfume called "Night" to Ballerina Margot Fonteyn and paying a visit to Karl Marx's grave in London's Highgate Cemetery, the adroit advance man for Khrushchev and Bulganin smiled unrlaggingly through a huge farewell press conference at the Russian embassy.

Malenkov began with a beaming report of the "wonderful,"' "talented" and "hospitable" British people he had met. Then for 40 minutes he fielded questions from some 300 newsmen (the biggest press conference in London's history), answering the questioners quickly in his sharp tenor and smiling so steadily that one reporter said it made his own face ache just watching. Questions covered everything. A newshen asked his impressions of English women. He chuckled jovially: "It was difficult for me to make love to English women through an interpreter."

His good humor seemed just as unruffled, his expression just as bland, when a reporter asked if he felt "any sense of guilt for your part in the Stalin purges." Replied the only surviving member of the special commission that carried out Stalin's party liquidations of the '30s: "Under collective leadership we always feel responsible for the shortcomings and errors we have made, and we openly admit them to our people. This helps rectify the position." Still smiling, Malenkov wound up confidently promising that the Soviet Union would win "the battle of coexistence" in "much less than 100 years." Then Malenkov soared off for Moscow in his Russian jetliner.

But behind the bland smile had been a watchful eye, appraising his audience well, and judging what should and should not be done during Khrushchev's and Bulganin's visit a fortnight hence. He had seen the unanimous press attack on Secret Police Chief Ivan Serov, denouncing Serov as a "thug," "butcher" and "murderer" when Serov flew in last month to check security arrangements for K. & B. And though Russian Ambassador Jacob Malik had said repeatedly that Serov would nonetheless accompany K. & B., Moscow last week discreetly dropped the head terrorist from the list of top Communists coming to Britain.

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