The View from the Villa

The host was in an ebullient vacation mood. Nikita Khrushchev met his guests, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lippmann, at the gate of his Black Sea villa, and for the next eight hours he filled them with food and wine, battered them with talk and badminton (Khrushchev and a lady press aide v. the Lippmanns). By then, the 71-year-old columnist was bushed: "We insisted on leaving in order to go to bed." He flew off to record his second private audience in three years with the Soviet Premier.* Between the wine and badminton, Lippmann's ear had caught enough Khrushchevisms for the construction of three syndicated columns that were carried last week in the New York Herald Tribune and some 450 other papers.

Almost at once, Host Khrushchev put his guests at ease by observing that the threat of war had lessened since they last met. "The two main forces in the world, the capitalist and the Socialist," said Khrushchev, "have concluded that it was useless to 'test' one another by military means." But as usual, the soft words surrounded a sharp dig at the U.S.: Khrushchev hastened to inform his guests that growing Soviet might has destroyed the Western appetite for war.

More Like Metternich. From there the talk turned to nuclear tests and inspection and Lippmann caught an odd twist in the Red line: the U.S.S.R., Khrushchev insisted, has never conducted underground nuclear tests and never will. "We do not see any value in small, tactical atomic weapons. If it comes to war, we shall use only the biggest weapons." Khrushchev doubted--as he has doubted all along--that Russia can come to terms with the U.S. on nuclear inspection, citing, among other reasons, his objection to a "neutral" (i.e., nonCommunist) administrator I here are no neutral men," said Khrushchev "I will never entrust the security ot the Soviet Union to any foreigner."

On Cuba, Laos and Iran, Lippmann was given a lesson in Leninist doctrine: "For Khrushchev these three are merely examples of what he regards as a worldwide and historic revolutionary movement which is surely destined to bring the old colonial countries into the Communist orbit" Lippmann got the impression that to Khrushchev "it is normal for a great power to undermine an unfriendly government within its own sphere of interest " deduced from this that "Khrushchev thinks much more like Richelieu and Metternich than like Woodrow Wilson "

Kennedy Will Fail. From the tone of his talk, Lippmann's garrulous host seemed ready to dismiss the small countries as inconsequential pawns in the power struggle. Khrushchev was more concerned with Red China ("I felt that he thought China as a problem of the future") Germany and the U.S. While exhibiting no animus" to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Khrushchev was convinced that Kennedy would fail in his efforts to reinvigorate the U.S. economy. Why? Because, said Khrushchev, "Rockefeller" and "Du Pont" won't let him. Confided Columnist Lippmann in a wry aside to his readers: "The view that he is running the Kennedy Administration will be news to Governor Rockefeller. I should add tint Mr. Khrushchev considers me a Republican, which will be news to Mr. Nixon."

As for Germany, Lippmann found Khrushchev "firmly resolved, perhaps irretrievably committed, to a showdown" and growing increasingly impatient: "He said several times that he would bring the German question to a head." While Khrushchev was willing to consider interim solutions, he made it clear that he would settle in the end for nothing less than two Germanys and a neutralized West Berlin Lippmann left his host "sobered" by what he had heard, sure that Khrushchev will not start serious trouble at least until he has had a face-to-face meeting with Kennedy. "On the one hand, the evidence was convincing that the U.S.S.R is not contemplating war and is genuinely concerned to prevent any crisis. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Soviet government has a relentless determination to foster the revolutionary movement in the underdeveloped countries."

*The first: a two-hour interview in 1958 in the Kremlin.

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