The Chevrolet Summit of Modest Hopes

At their first summit in Moscow in 1972, President Nixon gave Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev a Cadillac. At their second meeting last year in Washington, Nixon gave him a Lincoln Continental. Last week, back in Moscow for the third summit in as many years, Nixon brought with him a sporty Chevrolet Monte Carlo for the Soviet Union's foremost automobile enthusiast. In a curious sense, the gift of the cheaper auto,* which Brezhnev had specifically requested after reading that it was Motor Trend magazine's "car of the year," was an appropriate symbol of the more relaxed relations between Washington and Moscow and the metamorphosis of summits from the extraordinary into the ordinary.

Moscow 1974 had the down-home feeling of a reunion, with medium-size expectations and modest hopes. "It is almost routine now," said a Soviet official, as he surveyed the summit's opening-night festivities in the Kremlin's St. George's Hall. "Last time Nixon came it took us three months to get ready. This time it has taken two weeks."

Minor Accords. A major agreement on the control of nuclear arms, a follow-up to 1972's historic SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty, had been hoped for just a few months ago. It was all but ruled out even before the conference began as the two sides disputed which country should give up what in the complex equation of nuclear parity (TIME, July 1). "Nuclear agreements are not the core of this summit," said Presidential Chief of Staff Alexander Haig. "It's a terribly difficult subject. There is concern about the two sides going too far, too fast. We can't pull the souffle out of the oven before it's ready."

Though there was still the possibility that Nixon and Brezhnev might make some breakthrough weapons agreement by the end of their talks, so far there were only two minor arms accords in sight: one to ban big underground nuclear explosions (all other major tests were stopped by the two countries in 1963) and another to reduce from two to one the number of places each nation is allowed to protect with anti-ballistic missiles (ABMS). In addition, there were a host of other pacts in other areas. Among them:

> A ten-year trade agreement providing for, among other things, the exchange of industrial information and economic forecasts--both of which the Soviets have been reluctant to supply--and for mutual help in finding trade offices and homes for businessmen. Soviet-American trade has already risen dramatically (from $200 million in 1971 to $1.4 billion in 1973), and only last week, coincident with the summit, the Occidental Petroleum Corp. signed a series of 20-year contracts with the Soviets for a giant swap of chemicals. Though money would not change hands, the value of the barter deal at current prices would be about $20 billion.

> An agreement to share heart research, including the design of synthetic cardiac valves and the development of artificial hearts.

> An agreement to pool information on non-nuclear production of energy, including energy from solar and geothermal sources, and to share information on energy conservation.

> An accord to exchange information on housing, with particular concern for finding ways to construct earthquake-resistant buildings and structures that can withstand extreme cold and heat.

Stripped of the usual bureaucratic hyperbole, the justification of the Chevrolet summit was the simple fact that the President of the U.S. and the head of the Soviet Union should meet and talk as colleagues in power. Such meetings, said a Nixon aide, build up a "web of interrelationships" between the two superpowers. Another high U.S. official added, with a laconic reference to Watergate: "It was scheduled last year. We had no reason to cancel. If we did not go to the summit, we would be saying that we are not a functioning government."

More than most people, the Russians are aware of the power of nuance and symbol, and the fact that the President stopped off on his way to Moscow so that he could meet with America's NATO allies was a decided plus for the U.S. Nixon's presence in Brussels was a signal to the Soviets that NATO'S disarray of the past year was at least patched over and that the Atlantic shield was once again in place. "Without the alliance, it is doubtful that the [Soviet-American] detente would have begun," Nixon said as he replied to the greeting of King Baudouin Tuesday evening at Brussels' Melsbroek airport. "And without continuing a strong alliance, it is doubtful if the detente would continue."

At the start of his eight-day leap-frog tour from Washington to Brussels to Moscow, Nixon was still suffering from phlebitis, an inflammation of a vein that he had first noticed in his left leg when he began his Middle East tour two weeks earlier. Though the pain had disappeared--Press Secretary Ron Ziegler said that Nixon likened it to that of a deep bruise--the President nonetheless had to elevate the leg on his plane and in the privacy of his quarters on the ground. While phlebitis can be dangerous, even fatal if the clot moves to the lungs or brain, aides insisted that Nixon's case was well under control.

In Brussels, Nixon motored to NATO's barracks-like headquarters, where he spoke briefly and, along with representatives of the 14 other countries making up NATO, signed a new declaration of principles to mark the alliance's 25th anniversary. Then he headed for a luncheon that the Belgian King was giving for NATO leaders. Spotting friendly crowds, the President, disregarding both his phlebitis and the usual dictates of protocol, decided to walk instead of ride the two long blocks to the Royal Palace and shake hands with the people who lined the way. A tourist couple from Georgia gave a word of cheer from home--"God bless you. We are for you"--and the President lingered to find out that they lived near the Okefenokee Swamp. "I know where it is," he told them, adding: "Dry it out." The royal band, which had expected the President to arrive by limousine, was nonplused when he approached by foot. It started playing The Star-Spangled Banner when he was outside the gate--and played it twice again as he lingered to chat.

Show of Unity. Later, Nixon held court at the residence of the U.S. ambassador, seeing at hourly intervals West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Italian Premier Mariano Rumor. France's new President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, did not attend the NATO meeting; he remained in Paris to conclude a $5 billion trade deal with Iran (see THE WORLD). The Europeans were happy--if matter-of-factly realistic--about the Brussels session. The U.S. got a public show of Atlantic unity before Moscow, and the allies got both a continued commitment that U.S. troops would stay in Europe and a promise of closer consultation. All this had been worked out the previous week at the NATO meeting in Ottawa. This week, at the conclusion of the Moscow summit, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger will go to Brussels, Paris and Rome to tell the Europeans what happened in Moscow.

Whatever else he will report, Kissinger can tell the NATO allies that the third summit was certainly the friendliest and most relaxed. After weeks of intermittent rain, the Moscow summer finally arrived with Nixon Thursday afternoon, and warm, 82DEG sunshine sparkled off the presidential plane as it rolled up the runway at Vmukovo Airport. A huge banner said WELCOME PRESIDENT NIXON in English. Together with Premier Aleksei Kosygin, President Nikolai Podgorny and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Brezhnev himself was there to voice it, a considerable honor since he had never before appeared at the airport for a Western visitor, not even Charles de Gaulle or Willy Brandt. "It was a helluva plus," said one Nixon aide of Brezhnev's airport greeting.

Shaking hands warmly with the President, the ebullient Brezhnev led him by the arm to a position in front of the honor guard and coached him to say "Spasibo, soldat [Thank you, soldiers]." For Mrs. Nixon, Mrs. Brezhnev had a bouquet of roses. Nixon spent five minutes shaking hands with a smiling crowd of about 500, most of them bused in from nearby offices, and then rode with Brezhnev in a black Zil limousine the 15 miles to the Kremlin. The route, mainly along Lenin Avenue, was decked with American flags, as it had been in 1972, but crowds were deliberately kept to a polite minimum by Soviet police. Less than an hour after they landed, Brezhnev himself was showing the Nixons their suite at the Kremlin residence.

Very Tough. The first working meeting came that evening, when the President was ushered into Brezhnev's Kremlin office for an hour-and-ten-minute session under a picture of Lenin, with Brezhnev's interpreter as the only extra person. Later the two men went to St. Vladimir Hall for a reception attended by top Soviet and American officials. The Russians were lined up on one side of the room, the Americans on the other, and Brezhnev took Nixon first down the Russian side and then down the American. Kissinger stood at the end, and when the two leaders reached him, Nixon said: "He's much more flexible than [Defense Minister Andrei] Grechko." Replied Brezhnev: "Let's wait and see. Results will show." At that, Nixon stood back from Kissinger and reversed himself: "He's very tough." Brezhnev also stepped back a few paces and nodded his head: "Da, da. "

Lively Ties. Following the small talk, the group moved into the Facets Palace, one of the oldest parts of the Kremlin, for a dinner of fresh caviar, fish in aspic, venison, two traditional cold Russian soups, salmon and grouse. After the last course, Brezhnev rose to toast the President and talk of the "tangible progress" that had been made in Soviet-American relations in the past three years. "Probably never before have ties and contacts between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. in different areas of political, economic and cultural activity been as lively as they are today," he observed. It was important, he added, "to consolidate the successes already achieved."

In his turn, Nixon pointed to the progress of detente, describing it alliteratively as a movement "from confrontation to coexistence to cooperation." Then, no doubt speaking as much to his domestic critics as to the guests present, Nixon said that East-West progress had been made possible because of his friendly relationship with Brezhnev--and suggested that that relationship was necessary if detente was to continue. "It has been said that any agreement is only as good as the will of the parties to keep it," he asserted. "Because of our personal relationship, there is no question about our will to keep these agreements and to make more where they are in our mutual interests." The political translation, for which no one needed an interpreter, was that Richard Nixon is indispensable to the conduct of American foreign policy. "The rapport between the President and Brezhnev is the key to any further nuclear-arms-limitation agreement," a White House aide later insisted in case anyone had missed the point. "The question of personality is vital."

As a counterpoint to the official cheer, there jarred the Soviets' repression of their own citizens. Even before Nixon's arrival, Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and a vocal Russian dissident, sent a public letter from his Moscow apartment to both leaders, calling on them to discuss the "basic rights of man" at the summit. Specifically naming 85 "prisoners of conscience" in Soviet prisons--and estimating that there were 10,000 more--Sakharov asked for their freedom, as well as a general freedom of thought and information.

"If you shun humane tasks," he said, "you deprive your meetings of a vital spiritual force . . . and you cannot attain your lofty aims of peace and security." Later Sakharov began a hunger strike to protest Soviet repression, particularly the continued jailing of Biologist Vladimir Bukovsky, who first reported the infamous Soviet custom of putting political dissenters into psychiatric clinics. Two American correspondents checking up on the jailing of a Jewish scholar, meanwhile, were prevented from talking to his wife by Soviet police. TIME Correspondent John Shaw and Washington Post Reporter Robert Kaiser were physically barred from seeing Ina Rubin in her central Moscow apartment, though she had invited them to visit her.

Symbolic Gestures. The Soviet leaders are nevertheless sensitive to the fact that American criticism of Russian repression, led by Senator Henry Jackson (see box), is a threat to detente. In what can only be construed as a symbolic gesture to mollify U.S. opinion, they released Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, 67, who had been placed in a psychiatric clinic for political crimes five years ago. At the same time, Benjamin Levich, a Jew and a leading Soviet chemist, was told that next year he would receive his long-sought permission to emigrate to Israel. His two sons, both of whom had been harassed by authorities because of their own requests to leave the country, were told they could go before the end of this year.

At the summit, Nixon maintained the outward show of friendliness that Brezhnev established with his airport greeting. The President's first stop Friday was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, where he placed a wreath of red, white and blue flowers. On the way back to the Kremlin talks, Nixon persuaded his Soviet security guards to allow him to get out of his car to greet the several hundred Muscovites standing behind the steel barricades near Red Square. The guards reluctantly let him out in front of the State Historical Museum, and he strode over to the barricades, touching the dozens of hands that were reaching out to shake his. "We don't want another war," someone shouted in English. "Peace is very important," another said, prompting Nixon to reply: "For everybody, the whole world, the Russian people and the American people."

His unscheduled stopover made the President 15 minutes late for his first substantive meeting with Brezhnev in the Kremlin's St. Catherine Hall, which once served as the Empress's throne room. But Brezhnev, who had been chatting with reporters, appeared as good-natured as he had the day before. After two hours, the two delegations broke for lunch, then moved to St. Vladimir Hall, an ornate room of pink, white and gold, where they signed agreements to share research into energy, housing and heart disease.

Collage of Culture. Joined by their wives, who had spent the day at the famous Moscow Circus School, the two leaders went to the Bolshoi Theater Friday night for a superb collage of Soviet culture, bits of ballet, opera, folk singing, Cossack dancing and even a chorus of Swanee River, in both English and Russian. The couples, together with Kissinger, Kosygin and Podgorny, watched the performance from a flag-draped box at the rear of the theater, and during the intermission gathered for a light buffet. Toasting the women at the table, Brezhnev gallantly reached into a bouquet of roses and handed one to Pat Nixon. Talking to the performers backstage after the curtain, Nixon said that he had seen "a combination of variety, vitality and beauty--and that represents the whole [Soviet] nation." He invited all the performers to visit the U.S., and said in Russian, "See you again."

Saturday morning Nixon had been scheduled to visit Star City, the Soviet space center outside Moscow. Instead, he and Brezhnev decided to continue their talks in St. Catherine Hall before flying that afternoon for a weekend of rest and talks at Brezhnev's Yalta villa on the Black Sea. After that the two men were to spend several hours in Minsk, which was 80% destroyed by the Germans in World War II, and then return to Moscow for concluding talks and a grand send-off that would get Nixon home just in time for Independence Day.

While no fireworks were expected during the summit itself, the third Nixon-Brezhnev meeting seemed to be a landmark of another kind. It was the first of the quiet summits, the start of dull, workaday meetings that offered the possibility that the nuclear-arms competition some day might be ended.

*$5,578, v. approximately $10,000 apiece for the Cadillac and Continental.

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