Russia Wooing

Who was that gentleman talking so much like a Super-European? Jean Monnet? Paul Henri-Spaak? Not at all. It was none other than the foreign editor of Pravda, the official organ of Russia's Communist Party -- a man whose words and ideas could reason ably be expected to reflect the latest thinking and policy ambitions of the Kremlin. Last week, vacationing in The Netherlands, Yuri Zhukov spoke to the Dutch political weekly Haagse Post about what Russia has in mind when it comes to Europe, East or West. His obvious message: After soft-pedaling for the sake of detente their desire to replace U.S. influence in Europe with their own, the Russians are once again busily out to woo the Europeans.

Zhukov, 60, assured Europeans that they need not be scared by the "dire predictions" of French Journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber that U.S. business may one day dominate the Continent's economy. "If all Europeans, that is you and we, pull together," he said, "we can soon be boss in our own house." Then he cracked: "The Americans, with their strange habit of liquidating their leaders, should turn to their own neighbors, Canada and Mexico, for cooperation."

Dismissing NATO as "a completely useless affair," Zhukov admitted sportingly that the same might be said of the Warsaw Pact. "We must dissolve the two blocs and organize a system of European cooperation, economically, scientifically, culturally and even politically." For a start, Zhukov backs a Belgian project calling for a "Pan-European orientation conference," at which parliamentarians from all European countries would voice their plans for collaboration.

Fleas & Elephant. A united Europe is bound to emerge as the world's leading power, predicted Zhukov, making it clear that Russia ought to be included in the family. Even before the birth of the U.S., he said, "Dutch merchants traveled to St. Petersburg and Peter the Great came to Holland to learn a trade." This type of cooperation, he feels, continues today in such enterprises as the French Renault and Italian Fiat auto plants in the Soviet Union.

Charles de Gaulle's vision, in which the Continent is also divorced from the U.S., calls for a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. Zhukov's view does not stop at the Urals: "Russians are Europeans, no matter what side of the Urals they live on." Yet Russia obviously considers De Gaulle an ally in its European policy, so much so that even his recent fulminations against Communism in France do not bother Zhukov in the slightest. "That's election talk," he says. Nor does he think much of the student radicals who have lately upset De Gaulle. Comparing Rebel Leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit with Leftist Guru Herbert Marcuse of the University of California, Zhukov said: "Cohn-Bendit is a flea and Marcuse an elephant, although I strongly criticize his ideas too."

Little Hope. The Russians, who two years ago proposed an all-European security conference to disband the Continent's military pacts, are looking next door again with renewed interest. While the Viet Nam war persists, they foresee little hope for enlarged trade or other accords with the U.S. Instead, they seem ready to make new overtures to Western Europe, with its increasingly sophisticated technology. Moreover, with the U.S. preoccupied elsewhere, and with some Europeans wary of U.S. influence in their countries, Moscow may now feel that it has an outside chance to impose its own political formulas on the Continent.

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