Childish Joy

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev is as guilty of the crimes of Stalinism as the men he has unseated; on the record, he is no "liberal" Communist, but a man who has stolen Malenkov's "liberal" program and then indicted Malenkov as a reactionary. But the odd thing about Khrushchev, in a land where no man has a free vote, is that he is a man busily running for office.

Intrigue put Khrushchev into power, but he acts as if popularity will keep him there. No more beguiling or wilier demagogue has come down the pike in Soviet Communism's 40 years in power. "In our agriculture, Comrades," he told a Czech audience last week, "we see a great progress at present. Frankly speaking, we sometimes experience childish joy in it. Some workers in our trade organization sounded an alarm, saying there are no freezing plants to store our pork. I told them that we would easily solve this situation, which they chose to call a disaster. There is one easy way out--reduce prices, and then everyone will find a storage place in their own stomachs. We will be able to put hundreds and thousands of tons into that storage space! It is unlimited!"

Falling in Line. The line that Khrushchev has to peddle is optimism--Russia need not fear enemies, because it can beat them; it will overtake capitalism's production achievements, and then--as he told the capitalists a few weeks ago-"we will bury you." His ignorance of capitalism comes from Marxist lore; his own headlong ideas for solving agriculture crises the "easy way" have often flopped. He himself acknowledges that the Russian economic experts--at whom he always jeers--are agreed that his plans for equaling the U.S. in food production in a couple of seasons are impossible. His brother Stalinists--Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich--may have been united only in stern Marxist suspicion of the "childish joy" of his impulses. On the record, he is as committed to slavery, to crushing out trouble in the satellites, and to enmity of the West, as any Communist.

But the new Khrushchev line is the one he is stuck with: more consumer goods, less coercion of the peasants, a pledge of tolerance for different varieties of Communism in the satellites. He might intend to deliver on none of these promises, but all of them are an implied recognition of what his Communist subjects want (even if they have no vote), and he might yet be compelled by circumstances to deliver more than he intends to.

Everybody fell in with the new line. In Leningrad barrel-chested Marshal Georgy Zhukov (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), in a bottle-green uniform listing to port under a load of gold and silver orders, castigated the ousted Malenkov. Molotov, Kaganovich and Shepilov "antiparty group" for resisting progress. Orated Zhukov: "Its members objected in particular to the slogan: 'Catch up in the next few years to the United States in per capita production of meat, milk and butter,' put forward by the Central Committee on the initiative of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev." Why? Because the anti-party group "had not wanted to give up the rights and privileges they had held in their hands for nearly 30 years." In short, said Zhukov, these men were "freaks" not worthy of being party members.

Zhukov. the man whom Khrushchev in a notable slip on the CBS interview referred to as "my Defense Minister," is understood by some to be a simple soldier free of political ambitions. But he is beginning to sound more and more like a man who, in U.S. terms, has "Potomac fever."

Mein Host. As for Khrushchev himself, he returned to Moscow with his subdued partner Bulganin and immediately played ebullient host to a raft of visitors -- IndoChina's guerrilla Warlord Ho Chi Minh, Afghanistan's King Mohammed Zahir Shah, India's Army Chief of Staff K. S. Thimayya, France's pasty Top Communist Jacques Duclos, and Tito's two top hands, Edward Kardelj and Aleksander Rankovic. For the Tito-ists there was a picnic at Khrushchev's dacha near Moscow. Khrushchev was surrounded by his new -additions to the Presidium and ever-present Security Boss General Ivan Serov. Perhaps the Yugoslavs hoped to learn whether Khrushchev now intended to make good on the $250 million he promised to Tito in making up with him in 1955. Instead, in the kind of surprise party Khrushchev delights in, he confounded the two Yugoslavs in the Moscow woods by producing Albanian Communist Boss Enver Hoxha and Bulgaria's Party Leader Todor Zhivkov, who ever since Tito's quarrel with Stalin in 1948 have led the jackal pack in baying at Tito. A communique later said that everybody had a "frank and friendly talk." In Communist diplomatic language, a frank talk is one in which the parties do not agree.

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