World Notes Soviet Union

Former President Richard Nixon spent last week in Moscow on what his aide John Taylor described as a "private, fact-finding" mission. It was Nixon's sixth visit to the Soviet capital and his first since a 1974 summit with Leonid Brezhnev, just a month before Nixon resigned the presidency. Since he is the only U.S. President ever to visit the Kremlin, some diplomats speculated that Nixon might be helping to pave the way for a U.S.-Soviet summit. Others attributed the trip to Nixon's continuing campaign to build his image as a senior statesman.

Although Nixon spoke with Ronald Reagan before he left the U.S., he was not carrying a message from the President. While in Moscow, he stayed in a government guesthouse and met with Party Chief Mikhail Gorbachev, President Andrei Gromyko and Central Committee Secretary Anatoly Dobrynin.