Under the Skin

Arriving in Moscow aboard an Air France plane, with a party of 60, including outriders and newsmen, France's Premier Guy Mollet made one thing clear at the outset: "France belongs to alliances--I would say even to a community--to which she will remain faithful."

After this little speech at the airport, the French party drove off in one set of black limousines, and the Russian hosts (Bulganin and Molotov, but not Khrushchev) in another. Soon Mollet found that the Russians too could be direct.

"Some of the most brutally frank talk I've ever heard," said Socialist Mollet, emerging from one session.

Midway through his three-day meeting with the Kremlin leaders, Mollet invited the Moscow ambassadors of twelve NATO countries to lunch, to assure them that the Russians now knew they could not split NATO. "It took a Socialist, a man of the left, to convince them," he said. "I fought harder for NATO here in Moscow than I ever did in Paris."

The Non-Diplomats. But whether the subject was disarmament, German reunification, or Foreign Minister Christian Pineau's pet plan for channeling aid to underdeveloped countries through the U.N., reported Paris' Le Monde, it was "a dialogue between deaf men." Once Khrushchev rasped something that startled Mollet into an amazed grin. "I amuse you, don't I?" roared Khrushchev. "If I speak bluntly, it's because I'm not a diplomat." Schoolmasterly Socialist Mollet responded: "Neither am I."

In these days of dramatic top-level visits, it no longer seems to matter that leaders cannot agree. Everybody seems pleased enough just to meet and differ (the Russians are able to show their people how diligently they are seeking peace). At one party at the pagoda-like French embassy, Malenkov, Mikoyan and Molotov knocked back repartee with Mollet and Pineau. Having been asked by Malenkov to toast collective leadership, Mollet invited his guests to try the buffet. Only Mikoyan helped himself. Mollet then inquired slyly whether, under collective leadership, "If one man eats, the others are no longer hungry?" Closer to the canapes, Bulganin, Khrushchev and Marshal Zhukov chatted with U.S. Ambassador "Chip" Bohlen. Khrushchev ribbed Zhukov for helping himself "as though you haven't eaten for a day." Said Bohlen: "But the marshal is much thinner, now that he's lost 1,200,000 troops." A ripple of stout laughter floated across the room.

A final discussion of Algeria threw the last formal session into overtime, and delayed by five hours the signing of the year's most uncommunicative communique ("a useful exchange of opinions"). No sooner had Khrushchev asserted a pious hope that for the Algerian problem France would "find an appropriate solution in the spirit of our epoch" than he lurched up to the Egyptian ambassador at the huge Kremlin reception that followed, and lifted his glass in a toast "to the Arabs and all people struggling for national independence."

The Big Laugh. Russia, he said, laughs at all who say, "There are nations not grown up enough for self-government. You cannot stop history. We are those who fight for liberation." Russia proved able to govern itself, "and then became the second greatest world power. Why cannot the Arabs, the Indians and other people do that? There is no difference."

To show that all peoples are the same under the skin, Khrushchev told the story of a czar who in the old days left his clothes on a riverbank while he swam after a wounded animal. When people saw him naked, they laughed. "Prove you are a czar," they said. "He was naked and could not prove it," crowed Khrushchev. "In a bathtub you can't tell the difference between a czar and a Khrushchev."

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