IN the first hour of a big story, a wire-service reporter's zeal and television's vivid eye often provide the best witnesses of the event. But then come the consequences--not so easy to photograph or to flash as a bulletin. Any confrontation so major as the Cuban crisis leaves behind it an international trail of responses, regrets and reappraisals. Sometimes these become the most lasting effect of the event, as peoples and their leaders take new account of the shifting forces, and respond accordingly.

Such reconsiderations are often private, and quite different from what is publicly said--which is one reason why those who think that journalism should bring them "only the facts'' are asking for a barren and unreal account.

The questions that all of the world wanted to know after Khrushchev's retreat--Why did he do it? What happens to him now? Will he start something else?--occurred to most journalists, and are questions easier to pose than to answer. The full truth will be a long time emerging, but a journalist cannot evade attempting a present assessment. The answers involve both the unknowable and the imponderable, and do not lend themselves easily to resonant assurances so dear to commentators.

TIME'S own method of going about the story begins, but does not end, with the official sources. From Moscow, Correspondents Edmund Stevens and Donald Connery cabled reports with a frankness unthinkable in Stalin's day. Washington and London joined in. Then came into play not only TIME'S own Russian-speaking Soviet specialists in New York but a panoply of knowledgeable people in many places, whose estimates in previous Russian situations have proved sound and useful. Our U.N. correspondent talked to a number of delegates with earlier diplomatic experience in Russia. In Boston, our correspondent usually taps, among others, someone at Harvard's Russian Research Center and a Russian expert at M.I.T.'s Center for International Studies. In London and Paris are diplomats, research groups and members of assorted agencies of the James Bond category, who informally share with us their information and their conclusions. Our German bureau touched base with 15 assorted Kremlinologists (as they all hate to be called) in Bonn, Berlin and Munich. Most, if not all, of these sources insist on anonymity; they talk to us out of a fascination with the subject, a trust in our discretion, and an eagerness to share their knowledge in an area vital to us all. They tend to caution: few of them play the headline game of trying to choose up sides in the Kremlin, or to conjecture much about mysterious "hard line" factions in Moscow.

On a number of points they generally agree, as described in this week's cover story: on other more speculative matters they vary considerably. We do not merely add up their votes, but seek to find the most plausible and coherent pattern from among their varied reactions. In the end, the final judgments and responsibility are ours.

STALIN was on TIME'S cover ten times. With this week's issue, Khrushchev makes his eleventh cover appearance. He has now been on TIME'S cover more than anyone else except Ike, who, as soldier and President, holds the record at 16.

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