The Visiting Chairman

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, 65, tough, devious, versatile, flies into the U.S. this week with the enigmatic fame of the "Hangman of the Ukraine" and the "Butcher of Budapest," who has nonetheless restored to the U.S.S.R. (pop. 208 million) its broadest measure of liberty and prosperity since the Bolshevik Revolution. Khrushchev's intentions in the U.S. are just as enigmatic. Is he seeking a genuine thaw in the cold war that might lead to forms of peace? Is he seeking an American acceptance of the status quo of Communist conquests, a softening-up of American will? Is he trying to shore up his own status in Communism's labyrinthine society, and if so against whom--against an aggressive Communist China, against restless captive peoples, against hostile Kremlin cliques? Is the sum of Khrushchev's intentions that he means to show that his is the face of the future?

Walks by the River. Already the huge importance of whatever Khrushchev wants is apparent from the propaganda lengths he has gone to in order to make his trip to the U.S. a success. On trip's eve the U.S.S.R. hit the moon with a historic cosmic-rocket shot even though the moon would have been easier to hit. on other dates. Khrushchev violated every hallowed canon of Communist solidarity when he intervened between Communist China and India to calm down the Himalayan border crisis (see FOREIGN NEWS), thereby advertising to the world that Communism's monolith has its flaws. And his U.N. delegation acquiesced almost amiably in the decision to send a fact-finding commission to Laos.

Perhaps even more remarkable was Khrushchev's personal flouting of the other Communist canon, whereby the servants of the people are impersonal, i.e., their private lives are of no consequence, hence are not subject to public inquiry. Last week, in an unprecedented bending to U.S. hunger for personalities, he posed for photographs with his whole family in the Kremlin. Khrushchev in the U.S.--for all the stirrings of conscience and stirrings of resentment among those who fiercely oppose his coming--will probably get more than his share of curious and chaotic attention (see below).

"Unfinished Business." President Eisenhower, his personal leadership lifted to new highs of confidence by his triumph in Western Europe, was ready in the White House for whatever Khrushchev might bring. "The choice before world leaders is momentous," he said in a 15-minute TV talk to the nation. "It is my profound hope that some real progress will be forthcoming, even though no one would be so bold as to predict such an outcome. In this connection I know that neither America nor her allies will mistake good manners and candor for weakness; no principle or fundamental interest will be placed upon any auction block." Then the President, a modest man whose strength lies in the fact that he is not enigmatic but is widely and deeply understood, set forth the face of the future as the U.S. sees it. "Fellow Americans," the President said, "we venerate more widely than any other document, except only the Bible, the American Declaration of Independence. It stands enshrined today as a charter of human liberty and dignity. Until these things belong to every living person, their pursuit is an unfinished business."

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