UNITED NATIONS: Last Words

The first man ever to take off his shoe and use it for a gavel at the U.N. last week gathered 12,000 of the faithful in the Lenin Sports Palace in Moscow and gave his candid opinion of the international body. “A terrible organization!” said Nikita Khrushchev, all but shuddering at the memory. “If you could see how the delegates behave! They get much money and spent much time in restaurants with their wives. They do not participate in work, but just sit there and wait around in case there’s any voting. One important head of a delegation could not keep an appointment with me because he was too busy shopping.* This is the way they defend themselves against socialism!”

Yellow Devil. In his official report on his trip, Khrushchev professed himself even more appalled at that “terrible city” of New York. “Gorky called it the City of the Yellow Devil [i.e., gold] when he visited there 50 years ago,” said Khrushchev. “Since then, New York has become even more repulsive. It demonstrates the ugliness and degeneracy of capitalism.” People live “as if sewing themselves into stone bags.” Little children are “deprived of walking in the open fresh air. The streets are literally filled with automobiles, and the whole atmosphere is poisoned with gasoline.” But like the good soldier of socialism he is, Khrushchev made light of his burdens: “We knew the American Government was not going to greet us with bread and salt. We understood when we went to New York that we would not be going to our mother-in-law to eat pancakes but to work.”

Ignoring his repeated defeats at the U.N., Khrushchev claimed “considerable results” from his trip and called the Soviet anti-colonialism resolution “a great success.” He blamed the West, and in particular British Prime Minister Macmillan, for the rejection of his disarmament proposals and warned with a wag of his finger: “If they would like once again to test our strength, we will show them.”

In the catalogue of Soviet might that followed, Khrushchev let drop the only surprise of his speech. He accused the U.S. of “brink of war” policy for planning to send rocket submarines near the Russian coast and added: “The American generals and admirals cannot but know that our country also has submarines equipped with atomic engines and armed with rockets.” U.S. experts took note of Russia’s first claim to nuclear sub capacity and were inclined to believe Khrushchev. Best estimates are that Russian subs have only short-range rockets fired from the surface, still have nothing comparable to the U.S.’s Polaris. Possible reason for the timing of the announcement: the launching a day later of Britain’s first nuclear sub, the Dreadnought, powered by a U.S.-built reactor.

Who’s Great? Again, Khrushchev demanded revision of the U.N. Charter. “By what right are Britain and France considered great powers and India and Indonesia not?” As for Dag Hammarskjold: “No single person, however brilliant, is capable of expressing impartially the interests of the three groups of states [Communist, capitalist and neutralist] at once. Hammarskjold, a Swede by birth, is a representative of the monopoly capital of the United States in his political views, and it is these he serves.”

Quiet Business. Back in Manhattan, the U.N. finally got down to business. The Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on all nations to “refrain from actions likely to aggravate international tensions,” and agreed to a full-scale debate on disarmament and Algeria. The U.N. economic and financial commit tee voted 36-12 to give emergency consideration to a U.S. plan to use the U.N. as a clearinghouse for the distribution of surplus food to the hungry nations. Hammarskjold defended his record. Members of the Congo mission, he said, had acted “as responsible men facing a desperate emergency.” Still planning to stay on to the end of his term in April 1963, Hammarskjold warned that if the office were as severely restricted as the Russians wanted, then “do not expect anybody with a sense of his responsibilities to assume the duties of Secretary-General.” One by one the Iron Curtain countries, echoing Khrushchev, lined up to declare that they would not pay their share of the bill for the U.N.’s “dirty role” in the Congo. But no shoes pounded on the desks, and the chamber was so quiet it was almost dull.

*Khrushchev’s own shopping list in New York: portable TV sets, radios, an air conditioner, three cars, automobile tires, batteries and antifreeze, all taken home on the Baltika.