Celebration in Moscow

The Communist conquerors of Geneva continued their slow, triumphal progress homeward, waving at friends, accepting bouquets and basking in the plaudits of admirers--and those who suddenly found it wise to be admirers. After listening to Warsaw's official cheers, Red China's Chou En-lai and the Viet Minh's Pham Van Dong moved on to Moscow. There, Foreign Minister Molotov laid on a huge reception, attended by foreign diplomats, top Russian brass and correspondents. Afterward, they were honored with a lavish dinner presided over by Premier Malenkov himself, flanked by the man who jostles him for supreme power. First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. The night was filled with vodka and flushed talk of victory.

Significantly, the only major Western diplomat invited to share the head table with the celebrating Communists was Britain's Ambassador Sir William Hayter, an example of the Kremlin's attempt to split the Anglo-Americans. Other notable head-table guests: the ambassadors of India and Indonesia. The theme was "peaceful coexistence." As toast followed vodka toast, Khrushchev became conspicuously animated. Agriculture and party machinery are his specialties: he has never been outside the Iron Curtain in his life. But now he was full of foreign affairs. He proposed a toast to the Geneva settlement. He waxed confidential to the British ambassador: "I'm the Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, but in this question of coexistence. Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain is in complete agreement with me. Lenin laid down this principle--and very rightly."

"You British don't want to capture Leningrad and we don't want to take Glasgow." he told Sir William, who smiled and replied diplomatically: "Leningrad is a very nice town, prettier than Glasgow." The other guests got up to go, but Khrushchev persisted, kept tipping his glass with Hayter's. "Now we don't want any war, and we are not afraid of each other." Khrushchev told him. He turned and linked his arm with Chou's. "Now here's a good example of friendship--the Soviet Union and China. That's how we all should be friends." At the end, Malenkov and Chou left together through a double line of applauding guests.

Among those conspicuously not present: U.S. Ambassador "Chip" Bohlen (vacationing in Western Europe); the U.S. charge d'affaires, who was invited at the last moment to the reception but not the dinner and declined to go.

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