RUSSIA: The Stubby Peasant

From all the world’s front pages last week flashed the snaggle-toothed grin of a stubby little muzhik—a peasant’s son who in less than five years had emerged from relative obscurity to become the most amazing dictator the world had ever seen. This was no introverted intellectual like Lenin, no hysterical neurotic like Hitler, no brooding Byzantine murderer like Stalin. This was a cocky, ebullient farm boy—a man who could work all day, drink all night and, as he demonstrated again and again last week, jauntily settle historic issues with a quip or a proverb.

Was there a danger that the spectacle of another Kremlin power struggle would mar the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution? Nikita Khrushchev took care of it by sending a dog soaring into space with a whoosh that drowned out all other noises. With every beep from Sputnik II the world got a stark reminder of Russia’s strength. If they could send 1,120.8 Ibs. (53 times the weight of the proposed U.S. satellite) more than 1,000 miles into space, the Soviets certainly had a rocket capable of reaching any point on earth.

Was there a rival to be disposed of? Stalin would have had his secret police torture the offender, then put a bullet in his neck. Nikita Khrushchev, up against Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the second most powerful man in the U.S.S.R., brainwashed the stubborn soldier within a week, relegated him to obscurity with airy insouciance: “I saw Zhukov today. He is in good health. We have not yet decided on a new job for him, but he will get one for which he is experienced and qualified.”

Was there an international crisis? Stalin was slow to commit Russia to foreign adventures, slower still to back down once he had committed Soviet prestige. Nikita Khrushchev with one brash threat against Turkey had launched a war scare that set the whole world’s nerves on edge. Last week, bouncing into a reception at (of all places) the Turkish embassy, he called the crisis off between gulps of champagne: “Let him be damned who wants war. There will be no war.”

This week Party Boy Khrushchev, laughing, bantering and boozing, faces the greatest week-long party of all. From Hanoi, Ulan Bator, Pyongyang, Peking, Sofia, Budapest and Warsaw, the great lackeys of the Communist world have converged on Moscow to attend the 40th anniversary ceremonies and pay homage to the backslapping boss of Mother Russia. It is homage fully, if ruthlessly, earned. Never in history has a human being exercised such power as Nikita Khrushchev. None has flourished it with such bibulous, somehow engaging effrontery.