Coexisting with Failure

Nikita Khrushchev spent the week explaining himself.

His immediate problem was finding reasons why Soviet agriculture had not lived up to his 1957 promises to overtake the U.S. in per capita production of grain, meat and milk by this year. Even by the Russians' own figures, the 1960 output was nothing to boast about: grain, 131 million tons (U.S. total: 176 million tons); meat, 8,725,000 tons (U.S.: 12.8 million tons). Khrushchev blamed all on his hapless underlings in the field, and the press spread his charges far and wide. "There," roared the boss, "sits [Nikifor] Kalchenko, member of the Central Committee, member of the Supreme Soviet, chairman of the council of ministers of the great Ukrainian republic, and sheds water like a duck as if nothing has happened. He has caused great harm to the economy of the great republic." The Central Committee agreed that it was everybody's fault but Nikita's, and sternly resolved to expel from the party all those who dreamed up fake figures to conceal the shortfall.

A longer-range problem was explaining how Khrushchev, the champion of coexistence, came to agree with the bellicose Chinese at last month's Communist summit conference. In a speech published in the theoretical magazine Kommunist, Khrushchev explained the nuances to loyal Moscow party organizers. The Communist revolution, said Khrushchev, is not in favor of big wars or "local wars" of the Suez type that might blaze up and get out of control; but Communism will encourage and support "without reservation" all "national liberation wars" that might hurt "capitalist imperialism." In other words, the Russians would go on subsidizing subversion and stoking up revolution wherever it suited them. "National liberation wars" that Communism backs as "sacred," said Khrushchev, are being waged in Cuba, Algeria and Laos. In short, coexistence, as seen by Khrushchev, meant making as much trouble as he dared to make without risking the safety of Russia itself.

Lest any comrade be misled by his cordial message congratulating new U.S. President Kennedy on his inauguration, Khrushchev added a plain statement: "The No. 1 enemy of the peoples of the world," said Nikita, is the U.S.

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