RUSSIA: Call Me Brother

Few of this year’s foreign visitors to Washington have left behind so many favorable impressions as Indonesia’s President Sukarno (TIME, May 28). On the next leg of his world tour, Sukarno turned his steps toward Moscow. Said Sukarno, no Red but Asia’s top neutralist after Nehru: “I am not going to the Communist countries to seek a state of mind. I already know the Marxist state of mind. I am going to see whether or not they have carried out their ideals.”

From Leningrad to Baku, the Russians rolled out their flossiest Red carpets last week and strove to outdo the welcome extended to Sukarno by the U.S. Jet fighters escorted Sukarno’s plane. Guards of honor and equally well-drilled cheering multitudes greeted him at airports with bunting and banners. At a meeting of Leningrad engineering workers, who offered to help industrialize Indonesia, Sukarno, himself an engineer (Bandung Technical Institute), let his emotion overflow: “My heart brims with love and gratitude. I beg you not to address me as . . . Your Excellency. I beg you to call me Bung Karno [Brother Karno].”

Comparing the Bolshevik Revolution with his countrymen’s own 1949 revolt against the Dutch, Sukarno plugged for Soviet support in his aim to add West New Guinea to his fledgling republic. “In Indonesia,” he told the engineers, “the revolutionaries . . . greet each other with the cry of merdeka, which means freedom . . . I ask you now to join me in exclaiming merdeka five times.” Dutifully the freedomless Russians roared the strange new word. And from then on it was the vociferous cheer of welcome for the sprightly visitor from southern Asia.

Fed in the Great Kremlin Palace by top Soviet leaders, treated to firework displays and riverboat excursions, exposed to agricultural and industrial exhibitions, loaded with honorary degrees at Moscow University, the beaming Indonesian President responded feelingly: “We shall continue to struggle and to make the whole world free from capitalism and colonialism.” Later at Tashkent, under a shower of roses, he cried: “The friendship of the Soviet and Indonesian peoples is a friendship of fighters . . . The idea of coexistence will develop unceasingly.”

All in all, guest and host seemed to be finding much common ground. But at Tashkent, an area where the Moslem faith has been rigorously suppressed by the Communists, Moslem Sukarno gave his favorite catchword a sharp twist. Pointing out that the first of the five principles of the Asian Panch Shila, upon which the Indonesian state is founded, calls for belief in God and respect for all religions, Sukarno cut short his address so that Moslems present could attend evening prayer. Said he: “I say salaam aleikum (peace be with you). I close with merdeka, merdeka and once more merdeka.”

To Western observers, who feared to see Indonesia’s Sukarno sucked into the Soviet propaganda stream, it was a somewhat reassuring suggestion that, though a brother, he was not a comrade.