Senior Citizen Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev obviously had something to say, but since he fell from power in 1964 he hadn't had a chance to say it out loud. On July 11, NBC will televise an hour-long collection of Khrushchev views and interviews.

Two-thirds of the program, entitled Khrushchev in Exile--His Opinions and Revelations, consists of films of the ex-Premier during and prior to his reign. The remaining third is made up of taped interviews and movies--mostly in color --made recently on his seven-acre dacha, Petrovo Dalneye, on the Moskva River, 18 miles west of Moscow. U.S. viewers will see Nikita Sergeevich building small bonfires (a hobby), romping with his grandchildren, playing with his pet Alsatian, munching grapes on the front porch, peering through binoculars over walls that separate him from the rest of the world, dining with his wife Nina. "He looks," said NBC News Vice President Donald V. Meaney, "like a little old man watching life go by."

Keeping His Trousers On. At one point during the accompanying tape-recorded interviews, Khrushchev, with the aid of an interpreter, discusses the Cuban crisis. "Perhaps we shouldn't have done it, but if rockets hadn't been installed, would there be a Cuba now? No," he answers quickly. "It would have been wiped out and, if that's true, it means our transportation of rockets was justified. It cost us money, but we didn't lose a single man. What was the American aim?" he goes on. "They aimed to liquidate socialist Cuba. Our aim was to preserve Cuba, and Cuba still exists." Recalling the tense hours of the confrontation, Khrushchev said one night he slept fully dressed on his studio sofa. "I did not want to be in the position of one Western minister who, during the Suez crisis, rushed to the telephone without his trousers."

Khrushchev takes credit for preserving world peace by refusing to supply Red China with nuclear armaments, and quotes from a 1959 conversation with Mao Tse-tung to demonstrate Chinese bellicosity. "Comrade Khrushchev," Mao said, "you have only to provoke the Americans to military action and I will give you as many people as you wish--100 divisions, 200 divisions, 1,000." Khrushchev goes on to tell how he explained to Mao that "with contemporary techniques, his divisions meant nothing, because one or two rockets would be enough to turn all the divisions into dust." Mao disagreed, Khrushchev reports, "obviously regarding me as a coward."

Undisclosed Source. Khrushchev also has words of praise for the late John F. Kennedy: "A real statesman. He completely filled his post. I like the way he --unlike Eisenhower--had his personal opinions on all questions we discussed. Kennedy was entirely different from Eisenhower and had a precisely formulated answer for every question."

Khrushchev, who until now has been seen only briefly during once-a-year voting visits to Moscow, does not mention the present Soviet hierarchy during the NBC program. The source of the film and taped interviews, the last of which took place in March, is rumored to be Khrushchev's son-in-law, although NBC made clear that its own crews had not been directly involved. Twice in the past, the network's correspondents have been ordered out of the U.S.S.R. for treading on Kremlin toes. This time, said NBC News President William R. McAndrew, "it's going to be hard to predict Russian government reaction."

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