Six Crises (47 page)

I had been waiting for an opportunity to counterattack on his charges with regard to the Captive Nations Resolution and American “imperialism,” and this gave me an opening.

I told him that I hoped he did not think that the Soviets could hold a meeting of Communist representatives from fifty-one countries in Moscow without the United States knowing what went on. We knew, I said, that those attending that January meeting had been instructed to conduct subversive activities throughout the world. And I asked how he could reconcile his words about peace with his public statement, on his recent visit to Poland, that the USSR would openly support revolution anywhere in the world.

Khrushchev tried to side-step. In addition to taking the usual Soviet line that uprisings spearheaded by Communists are “simply peoples' revolutions” and are not assisted or directed from the Soviet Union, he said the trouble was that the United States did not understand Communist ideas. Communists had always been against subversion and terror, and true Marxists had always been against “individual terror.” But mass uprisings, where the bourgeois do not surrender their power peacefully, are a different thing altogether and are favored by Marxists.

Did he then mean that the people in bourgeois countries were “captives” whose liberation was justified, I asked?

Now Khrushchev changed his tune. “Captives” was a vulgar term, not “scientific.”

I pressed the point. If it was true that the Soviet Union did not support revolutions in non-Communist countries, how could he account for the uprising the previous week in northern Iraq, or for the
coup d'état
in Czechoslovakia? And if Communists were against individual terror, how could he justify the Soviet radio broadcasts to Latin America which had incited and approved the use of terrorism against Mrs. Nixon and me in Caracas?

This point struck home. Khrushchev replied that he never evaded tough questions and quoted the Russian proverb, “You are my guest, but truth is my mother.” He admitted that the sympathy of the people of the USSR was with the people who had been against me on my trip to South America, but their indignation was not directed against me and Mrs. Nixon personally—only against the “imperialistic” policies of the United States. And here he appeared to be addressing Mrs.
Nixon—for whom he seemed to have genuine admiration—as much as me. The trouble was that the United States was trying to control Venezuela because of its strategic importance. This was imperialism and the people could never tolerate that.

I asked him what then, if he thought our policies were imperialistic, he would call his policy toward Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, where Communist governments were kept in power because of the presence of thousands of Soviet troops.

He brushed aside my question on the ground that that was a different matter.

He turned the discussion to Vietnam and charged that Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Communist North Vietnam, wants elections for the whole country, while the United States opposes them, contrary to the agreement that had been reached three years before. Why did we do this, he asked? While it was true that the refusal to have elections had been announced officially by President Diem of South Vietnam, everybody knew, he said, that we pulled the strings on him.

I countered by asking him who pulled the strings in North Vietnam. I pointed out that the reason Diem had opposed elections was that Communist North Vietnam would not permit the International Control Commission to supervise the elections in its territory. And I added that I was glad to hear that he agreed with the principle of free elections but I could not understand why, if he was for free elections in Vietnam, he was against free elections in East and West Germany as a method of unifying Germany and settling the German problem once and for all. Khrushchev's response was that free elections as proposed by the West would engulf East Germany and make all of Germany an ally of the West. In effect, while he did not say this directly, he was simply stating the proposition that he was for elections only when he was sure that the Communists would win.

For the last two hours of our discussion we went around and around on the German problem, with him restating the Soviet position and me setting forth again the American position. I pointed out that it was the Soviet proposal to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany that was creating the present (1959) crisis which threatened peace. I emphasized repeatedly that the vital interests of both our countries were involved in the Berlin and German problems and that neither side should confront the other with an impossible situation.

Ambassador Thompson, upon my suggestion that he outline the details of the Western proposals for a Berlin solution, declared that if the
Soviets pushed the situation to a crisis, it would be hard to reconcile this with their words about peace. For the first and only time that afternoon, Khrushchev seemed to have a burst of temper and raised his voice. The Ambassador should be careful when using the word peace, he warned; what he had said sounded like a threat. The Soviet Union would sign a peace treaty and the West could declare war if it wished. Thompson countered by pointing out that all he had wanted to say was that forcing a crisis was not a step toward peace.

Khrushchev now switched his ground again. He demanded that I state what was incompatible with Western interests in the Soviet proposals on Berlin and Germany. In other words, he was insisting that we negotiate on his demands rather than on ours.

I could not in any event change our government's position. I could only try to see where his position might be flexible. But even had my hands not been tied in this way, I would not have fallen into his trap. I side-stepped his invitation to debate on his own ground. Instead, I said that in order for agreement to be reached on that problem and on others such as disarmament, nuclear testing, and trade, both sides must be willing to agree to changes in their positions and that progress in these areas could be made only in a climate of calm, not of crisis.

Khrushchev agreed that a calm atmosphere was desirable but said that the United States should not threaten the Soviet Union with war. He charged that apparently I did not want to use that sort of language, so I had asked my Ambassador to do so. I responded that I had listened carefully to Ambassador Thompson's statement and that under no circumstances could it be described as a threat.

We moved to the subject of an atomic test ban. I pointed out that the major problem as far as inspection was concerned involved underground tests. Why, then, should he not accept President Eisenhower's proposal for discontinuing tests in the atmosphere as a first step, since such tests can be detected without an elaborate inspection system, and since this would solve the fallout problem. I asked him whether his position, as far as a test ban was concerned, was “all or nothing.”

Khrushchev replied bluntly that that was precisely the Soviet position, and that he couldn't understand why the United States wanted to continue tests since we had more bombs anyway. He wondered whether they were inferior to those the Soviet had.

I asked whether he had considered the possibility of testing underground for the purpose of developing so-called “atomic dynamite” for peaceful purposes, such as building canals and harbors. He said that
such development was completely unnecessary and that TNT was sufficient for construction purposes.

We had been talking for over four hours when I put a key question to Khrushchev. “I want to ask one question—do you think there is any room for negotiation in the Soviet position on Berlin and Germany?” Certainly Khrushchev would not want to come to a meeting if President Eisenhower were not prepared to negotiate. If President Eisenhower were sitting across the table from him, would Khrushchev have anything that he would be willing to negotiate?

Khrushchev said that this was a “fair” question. But then he said it would be easier for him to reply in terms of what the Soviet Union could
not
accept. After in this way avoiding negotiating on my grounds, he then proceeded again to spell out the Soviet position: the Soviet Union would never accept a perpetuation of the occupation regime in West Berlin, with or without a summit meeting.

We had ended up, in effect, where we had started. On each controversial point, Khrushchev had insisted that he was right and that we were wrong. He did not give an inch.

He yielded perhaps a half inch on only one point I made: that he could not expect President Eisenhower to go to a summit conference merely to sign his name to Soviet proposals. But he added that the same was true for him: he would not go to a summit to sign U. S. proposals.

“I would much rather go hunting and shoot ducks,” he said.

At this point I asked Dr. Milton Eisenhower to express any further views he might have on the subjects we had been discussing, and he made a most eloquent statement. He said that it was a privilege to attend this historic meeting, a meeting that offered real hope for peace. He emphasized that never in history had the people of the United States started a war. All that our people wanted was that the people of the world might live in peace, choose their own governments, and select their own methods of progress. He observed that in another eighteen months his brother, President Eisenhower, would have completed fifty years of service to his country. He expressed the hope that by some miracle, within the time before the Eisenhower Administration ended, something would be done to ensure that no war should occur.

I watched Khrushchev closely as Dr. Eisenhower's statement was translated for him. His expression never changed. His eyes were as cold as they had been all afternoon.

At 8:50, over five hours after we had sat down for lunch, we got up from the table. I decided that I would try to make one more effort to
get through to Khrushchev. I asked to speak to him alone. Walking over the grounds of the dacha with only Troyanovsky, his interpreter, with us, I brought up the invitation President Eisenhower had extended to him to come and visit the United States, which we had not discussed before. I explained that his visit would be met with mixed reactions in the United States. I urged him to do everything possible to create the proper atmosphere for constructive talks. Then I suggested that the eyes of the world were on the Geneva Foreign Ministers Conference and that some action on his part to break the impasse on the Berlin question could be a dramatic event which would make his visit to the United States not only successful but also historical in making progress toward a peaceful settlement of our differences.

It was the most persuasive plea I could make. He listened without interruption and then answered, noncommittally, that he would keep in touch with Andrei Gromyko in Geneva. I sensed that my plea had not moved him any more than had the eloquent statement of our hopes for peace which Milton Eisenhower had made at the luncheon table.

For over seven hours, beginning on our ride down the river and continuing through the long luncheon, I had been engaged in virtual hand-to-hand combat with Khrushchev on the outstanding differences between the United States and the USSR. But I was not nearly as tired physically and emotionally after this session as I had been two days earlier after our much shorter “kitchen debate.” The reason lies in one of the most common characteristics of the effect a crisis has on an individual. At the long, five-hour conference I had been able to express my views without restraint—to go all out in defending the United States' position and in attacking vulnerable points in the Soviet position. In the “kitchen debate,” I had had to restrain myself time and time again from expressing views I deeply felt and wanted to get across. There is nothing more wearing than to suppress the natural impulse to meet a crisis head-on, using every possible resource to achieve victory.

•  •  •

Now my talks with Khrushchev were over. When I returned to the Embassy residence that night I tried to evaluate not only what he had said but even more what kind of a man he was. I recalled a conversation I had had with an Ambassador from a European country shortly after Khrushchev came to power, when, with Bulganin, he had made his first trip outside Russia to visit Prague. He had been crude, appeared to be drunk, and, in his first brush with the international social set, seemed to be uncomfortably out of place. Many of the press observers
who covered that visit spoke of him contemptuously. They wrote that “he was a lightweight compared to Stalin”; “he was crude and out of his class”; “he would not last long.” And the general conclusion was that he would not be nearly as difficult to handle as Stalin because of lack of sophistication and knowledge in international affairs.

“These observations could not be more superficial or wrong,” my diplomat friend had told me. “Those who write this way are making the usual mistake of many who move in international society. Fine manners and appreciation of culture, elegant language and fashionable clothing, are given too much weight as they evaluate an individual. No man could have fought his way up through the jungle of Communist intrigue, through purges, exile, and disgrace, during the period of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Malenkov, without having not only iron determination and unlimited stamina, but also intelligence and extraordinary all-round ability. These observers, as is too often the case, are looking at the veneer, rather than what is underneath.”

As I look back over my conversations with Khrushchev, I could see how right my friend had been. A picture of Khrushchev, the man, began to form in my mind. Intelligence, a quick-hitting sense of humor, always on the offensive, colorful in action and words, a tendency to be a show-off, particularly where he has any kind of a gallery to play to, a steel-like determination coupled with an almost compulsive tendency to press an advantage—to take a mile where his opponent gives an inch—to run over anyone who shows any sign of timidity or weakness—this was Khrushchev. A man who does his homework, prides himself on knowing as much about his opponent's position as he does his own, particularly effective in debate because of his resourcefulness, his ability to twist and turn, to change the subject when he is forced into a corner or an untenable position.