Six Crises (48 page)

In one respect the world is fortunate that, with the incredible power he has at his disposal, Khrushchev is the kind of man he is. Because the danger of war would be infinitely greater if Khrushchev, like Hitler, acted rashly and impulsively during fits of anger, verging on insanity. Despite giving the public impression of being a highly emotional man who might start war in a moment of anger, or when he had had too much to drink, Khrushchev had just demonstrated to me that when anything of importance was being discussed he is sober, cold, unemotional, and analytical. He will be influenced in his conduct only by the hard realities of the power balance, and to that extent we can exert some control over his actions and our own destiny.

Khrushchev has often been called a chess player in conducting his international policies—I suppose because chess is a favorite Russian game. I do not know chess, but I do know poker; and there is no doubt but that Khrushchev would have been a superb poker player. First, he is out to win. Second, like any good poker player, he plans ahead so that he can win the big pots. He likes to bluff, but he knows that if you bluff on small pots and fail consistently to produce the cards, you must expect your opponent to call your bluff on the big pots.

That, in effect, is what happened in Laos and in Cuba. The United States talked big and did not back up its talk with action: we bluffed, and, when called, we did not produce the cards. The effect of this on Khrushchev is obvious: he has caught us bluffing on some small pots. He assumes, therefore, that we may be bluffing on Berlin—the big pot—and he may be tempted to call us on that one. There is nothing more dangerous in dealing with a man like Khrushchev than to talk bigger than we are prepared to act. It is this kind of conduct that could lead to the miscalculation on his part which would bring war. Khrushchev probably would have probed the Berlin situation and created a crisis, in any event. But what happened in Laos and Cuba tended to make him more cocky and far more belligerent than he would otherwise have been.

The Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy was formulated on the principle that we should stand ready to call international Communism's bluff on any pot, large or small. If we let them know that we will defend freedom when the stakes are small, the Soviets are not encouraged to threaten freedom where the stakes are higher. That is why the two small islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and all the other peripheral areas, are so important in the poker game of world politics.

Finally, I had seen a striking example of Khrushchev's diplomatic tactics.

First, he demands something to which he is not entitled. Second, he threatens war if he does not get what he demands. Third, he charges that we will be endangering the peace unless we negotiate on his demands. And fourth, the price of peace is giving him half or more of what he was not entitled to in the first place.

This, in essence, was what he was trying to do in 1959, and what he is trying to do today, on the question of Berlin. If we are not constantly to be in the position of simply negotiating the rate of our retreat, we must counter his demands—which are designed to extend slavery—with our own, which have the objective of extending freedom. That is our best course for avoiding both retreat and war. At the core, we must
remember, Khrushchev is a cold, hardheaded Marxist, as undeviating as Stalin, and far more sophisticated.

•  •  •

The next morning we received an interesting message from Khrushchev. He said that he had just learned that we would like to take our own plane to Leningrad and that he had no objection to our doing so. (It was too late, of course, for us to change the arrangements we had made to use the Soviet jet transports.) The night before, he had urged us to stay at the dacha, rather than return to the Embassy residence, because he thought we would be far more comfortable there.

The pattern was clear. In discussions on matters of substance, he conceded nothing and demanded everything. He could not have been more unreasonable. But he also was determined to do his best to see that his public image was one of sweet reasonableness. He knew that inconsequential gestures of courtesy cost him nothing as far as his major objectives were concerned and served to convince some people that he was a fair and reasonable man.

I left Moscow early that morning with a sense of relief, thinking that I would now have a respite from the tension and crisis-laden atmosphere of dealing with Khrushchev. This was wishful thinking. The “spirit of Khrushchev,” or the line he laid down for my visit, followed me constantly, without letup, on my four-day tour of Leningrad and the Siberian cities of Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk.

The American party and the press traveled in a convoy of three twin-engined Soviet jet planes, TU-104s, because Soviet officials had initially refused to allow us to use our own planes for travel within the Soviet Union. Presumably they feared we might photograph their country from our own planes.

I had looked forward to spreading the good word,
mir i druzhba,
peace and friendship, to the people of Russia, and I believe I was partially successful in this for it seemed that the farther away from Moscow I got, the friendlier the people were. Large crowds in Leningrad, in the Ural manufacturing city of Sverdlovsk, and in the Siberian frontier city of Novosibirsk, came out to greet us. Thousands upon thousands answered my words of greeting with the cry,
druzhba—
friendship. The masses of the Russian people, as distinguished from the elite few who make up the Communist hierarchy, are truly friendly toward the United States. They remember our help in World War II, they know at firsthand the terrible destruction of war and desperately want peace.

Nevertheless, everywhere I went there were planted hecklers who
asked obvious, rehearsed political questions. As I toured hydroelectric projects, factories, schoolrooms, or mines, a familiar routine developed. Someone would step out of the crowd, describe himself as a worker or “just a plain Soviet citizen,” and request permission to ask me a question. I would always reply in the affirmative. Then he would recite a question almost by rote. Why is the United States blocking agreement on stopping atomic testing? Why does America want war? Why does America threaten us with military bases on foreign soil? Why won't America agree to a solution of the Berlin question? The questions were obviously designed to embarrass me, and through me the foreign policy of the United States. With the swarm of newsmen around, I would answer each question rationally, explaining with pointed patience the position of the Western Allies on each question and the opposing Soviet position.

The routine became so repetitious that the traveling press corps began to make bets among themselves about the time and place of the next “little kitchen debate.” These “debates” occurred in all kinds of places, every day—on a factory assembly line, at an electric plant, at the ballet, in a hotel lobby. The most amusing encounter occurred deep within a copper mine in Petrolyarsk, near Sverdlovsk in the Urals. Dressed in long johns, a wool shirt and breeches, knee-length rubber boots, a miner's coat, and a miner's hat with a lamp on it, I was slogging my way through the muck and slime, accompanied by four newspapermen and several Soviet officials, when two miners shut off their clattering air drills and presented themselves to me.

“Mr. Vice President,” said one, “may I ask a question? The Soviet Union has proposed suspension of atomic tests but the United States refuses. Why?” The setting for such a question was so incongruous that everyone, including the Russians, burst out laughing. Even the two miners recognized the ridiculous circumstances of their assignment and joined in the laughter. But I did not miss an opportunity to answer the question. “You couldn't have asked such a question in a better place,” I said. “An agreement must have inspection provisions which will assure the detection of underground tests.”

Harrison E. Salisbury, dean of the American correspondents in Russia, summarized the heckling situation for the New York
Times
this way:

Vice President Richard M. Nixon preached the virtues of free speech to several hecklers . . . today. It was one of the rarest of experiences in Soviet life—a free and easy interchange between a leading personality
and challengers who appeared from the crowd. The similarity of the questions directed at Mr. Nixon and the tactics of the questioners suggested a central source of inspiration. That the agitation and propaganda department of the Communist Party Central Committee is increasingly nervous over the impact of Mr. Nixon's man-to-man approach was indicated by several pin pricking reports in the press. . . .

It must be understood that this heckling campaign provided the only unpleasant incidents in four full days of touring in which I observed a great deal of the Soviet Union and its people and spoke out repeatedly for friendship and peace. These were sixteen-hour, tiring days, beginning early in the morning and often stretching to midnight. I recognized the obvious strategy of the Soviets to probe for any weakness that might be within me, not unlike their international strategy of probing for soft spots around the world. But I was determined to maintain my equilibrium and composure. My objective was to turn the hecklers' questions into an opportunity for presenting United States policy to the Russian people. Only once did I lose my temper. That occurred near the end of the tour and with considerable provocation.

It came after a grueling four-hour tour of the huge Uralmash machine plant near Sverdlovsk. The factory was still using some of the huge lathes and drill presses which the United States had sent to Russia under the Lend-Lease program during World War II. It was now manufacturing textile machinery for Red China. At least twenty times, as I started down each new assembly line, a heckler would stop me and put me through the now familiar inquisition. At the end of the tour of the plant, the factory manager insisted that we come to his office, and there, sitting around a table, he and his associates hammered away at me on U. S. policy toward Red China. Finally, realizing that I was two hours behind schedule, I rose and cut short the conversation. The press corps by this time had gone ahead to the next scheduled stop.

When I walked out of the factory, with only Georgi Zhukov, the Soviet Minister of Information, and Akalovsky, my interpreter, with me, it was almost dark. But there outside the gate, patiently waiting for me since the change of work shifts, were more than 2000 factory employees. They had been standing there for over an hour. When I waved to them, they sent up a rousing cheer with intermittent shouts of “Welcome!” The Soviet authorities had become increasingly irritated by the warmth of my reception. I had noticed that on several previous stops the police had been trying to discourage the crowds
from expressing their enthusiasm. On this occasion, I just happened to see one burly character roughly seize a woman by the shoulder to stop her from applauding. Leaving Zhukov behind without any explanation, I turned and walked quickly over to the police officer, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him as hard as I could. “Don't ever do that again,” I said sharply. “When the people are happy and want to express themselves, you leave them alone.” Akalovsky, standing beside me, caught the spirit, and translated what I had said as angrily in Russian as I had in English.

“I didn't do anything,” the policeman protested.

“Yes, you did,” I said. “I saw you push this woman. Don't ever do that again.”

The crowd swarmed around, apparently delighted that someone dared take on the Soviet police. Akalovsky told me later that he heard several workers say to the officer, “Now you've caught it. You'd better leave us alone.”

By this time, Zhukov walked up and asked what was the matter. “Let's get in the car and we'll discuss this later,” I told him. Zhukov, who was my official escort on the entire tour, was a confidant of Khrushchev and chief propagandist for the government. He was a suave, well-educated man of about fifty who had traveled extensively in Europe and the United States as a correspondent and editor of
Pravda.
As we drove away from the factory, I was in no mood for polite explanations and I laid it on the line to Zhukov, whose official title, ironically, was Chairman of the State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

“Mr. Zhukov,” I said, “this little game you've been playing with me through your planted hecklers for the past few days has not been going well with the press, and in my opinion it is backfiring even among your own people. You underestimate their intelligence. They aren't dumb. They know when somebody is acting and when it is the real thing—particularly when the acts have been so amateurish. Now, I just want to put you on notice that I will continue to answer your hecklers without protest. But the next time I see one of your policemen trying to keep a crowd from indicating its friendship for the United States, I am going to blast the whole bunch of you publicly in a way you'll never forget. We have our differences, and I believe in discussing them honestly and candidly. But we don't have to make a joke out of the whole business.”

Zhukov tried to deny that he or Khrushchev was responsible for
the hecklers or the police control of the crowds. “The police were just trying to protect you,” he said.

“The police don't have to protect me from friendly people,” I answered, and then sat in silence for the balance of our drive to the next stop on the schedule. I do not know if my talk with Zhukov did any good, but it helped me personally: I had let off some of the steam which had been building up to the exploding point.

I wound up my ten-day tour of the Soviet Union back in Moscow with an unprecedented thirty-minute speech to the Russian people on a nationwide radio-TV hookup.

The preparation of this broadcast was a crisis in itself. Thompson kept emphasizing to me how important it was. This would be the first time in history that a Russian television audience would hear a top American official defend United States foreign policy.