Read All About It!

Snow flurries and the November wind made the days bitter with cold, but crowds still clustered around Moscow's hundreds of outdoor bulletin boards to pore over the tacked-up tearsheets from Izvestia, the Soviet government's official newspaper. Never before had Russia's citizenry been exposed to such a story: an interview with the President of the U.S., giving the American viewpoint on the cold war and detailing how the Soviet Union was endangering the peace.

Before his interview with Izvestia's Editor Aleksei I. Adzhubei, who is also Khrushchev's son-in-law. President Kennedy made a deliberate decision to speak quietly, without bombast or belligerence. As a result, the two-hour interview, carried nearly verbatim by Izvestia, produced little earth-shaking news. Much of the U.S. press gave it a better front-page display than did Izvestia (see cut),* but President Kennedy was satisfied that he had accomplished his aim of giving the Russian people a reasoned explanation of the U.S. position.

"A Fair Opportunity." The great threat to peace, Kennedy told Adzhubei, "is the effort by the Soviet Union to communize. in a sense, the entire world. If the people of any country choose to follow a Communist system in a free election, after a fair opportunity for a number of views to be presented, the United States would accept that. What we object to is the attempt to impose Communism by force, or a situation where once a people may have fallen under Communism, the Communists do not give them a fair opportunity to make another choice."

Reading his prepared questions from white cards, Adzhubei's general attitude was more that of a Soviet politician than that of a newsman; he was. by turns, both argumentative and patronizing. "We would be happy,'' he said, "if you, Mr. President, were to state that the interference in the affairs of Cuba was a mistake." Replied Kennedy: "Until the present government of Cuba will allow free and honest elections, it cannot claim to represent the majority of the people. That is our dispute with Cuba."

On specific issues. Kennedy reminded the Russians that the Soviet Union had resumed nuclear testing even as their envoys were at the conference table in Geneva ostensibly trying to work out a permanent test ban. Kennedy also noted that Russia has never allowed the nations of Eastern Europe to have the free elections that were promised at Yalta and Potsdam.

Realism & Recognition. The main cause of cold war tensions. Kennedy said time and again, is the Russian challenge to Berlin and West Germany: "Now we recognize that today the Soviet Union does not intend to permit reunification, and that as long as the Soviet Union has that policy, Germany will not be reunified. The question now is whether the Soviet Union will sign a treaty with the East German authorities which will increase tension rather than diminish it. What we find to be so dangerous is the claim that that treaty will deny us our rights in West Berlin, rights which we won through the war, rights which were agreed to by the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France."

In reply, Adzhubei said: "If I understand the translation correctly. I have heard a very unrealistic term. I have in mind the term 'East German authorities.' It would be more pleasant to hear 'Government of the German Democratic Republic.' " President Kennedy would not give him the pleasure of hearing the East Germans referred to as a nation. "The reason we have been reluctant to recognize East Germany as a sovereign power is that we do not recognize the division of Germany.

"All we wish to do," continued Kennedy, "is to maintain a very limited--and they are very limited--number of troops of the three powers in West Berlin, and to have, for example, an international administration on the Autobahn so that goods and people can move freely in and out. But if East Germany is going to exercise the right of authority over that access, we are going to have continued tension there."

No Nukes. Early in the talk, Adzhubei made the point that the Soviet Union is still bitter toward Germany from World War II: "In the heart of every Soviet citizen, in the soul of every Soviet citizen, coals are still burning from the last war." Toward the end of the interview. Adzhubei tried to score a debater's point against Kennedy by asking him to assume that he was a Soviet naval officer and a veteran of World War II who was watching West Germany rearm. Said Adzhubei: "What would your attitude be?" Said Kennedy: "If I were a Soviet veteran, I would see that West Germany now has only nine divisions, which is a fraction of the Soviet forces. It has no nuclear weapons of its own. It has a very small air force--almost no navy. So I do not see that this country represents a military threat now to the Soviet Union. No one is ever going to invade the Soviet Union again. There is no military power that can do that." As a further assurance to the Russians, Kennedy repeated that the U.S. will not give nuclear arms to the West Germans, adding: "I would be extremely reluctant to see West Germany acquire a nuclear capacity of its own."

Throughout the interview, President Kennedy insisted that the U.S. and the Soviet Union must sooner or later enter into direct negotiations over Berlin and West Germany. "We have had peace, really, in Europe for 15 years," said the President. "The problem now is to see if we can reach a negotiation which can settle this matter for another 15 years. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the world over the long run, but at least we ought to be able to settle this matter of Berlin and Germany."

*The international edition of Izvestia that was airmailed to the U.S. did not carry the Kennedy interview at all. The edition that arrived in the U.S. the next day did run the story, but tucked it away on page 5.

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