Signals from Moscow

He sends us signals

And the people receive them.

This is a victory of the Soviet regime.

The way to far-off skies has been

opened.

And about this a star talks to another

In Russian, now.

--Yaroslav Smeliakov

in Komsomolskaya Pravda

All last week Nikita Khrushchev flexed his muscles and sent out signals in the toughest kind of Russian. For his main transmitter the exultant Soviet boss chose visiting U.S. Newsman James Reston, shrewdly calculating that as Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, Reston was in a position to give the message maximum amplification in the U.S.

"When we announced the successful testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile," Khrushchev crowed, "some American statesmen did not believe us. Now that we have successfully launched an earth satellite, only technically ignorant people can doubt this. The U.S. does not have an intercontinental ballistic missile; otherwise it would also have easily launched an earth satellite of its own."

Khrushchev brushed off Reston's request for comment on Soviet political and economic developments,* hammered away at what he clearly felt to be the prime consequence of Russia's celestial showpiece--the demonstration that Russia was no longer the inferior of the U.S. and could no longer be treated like one. The Western disarmament proposals "are conditions of the strong for the weak." he complained. "They sound something like an ultimatum . . . Mr. Eisenhower tries to deal with us as with his satellites . . . But one cannot deal with us in that way."

Khrushchev was deliberately casual about the satellite itself ("they phoned me and told me ... I congratulated the entire group of engineers and technicians on this outstanding achievement and calmly went to bed"), suggesting that the Sputnik was the least of the rocket wonders the Soviet had up its sleeve, and that in view of these the West's bombers and bases were already useless. "If you study our latest proposals, you will no longer find any mention of control posts at airfields ... It is useless to create control posts to watch obsolete airplanes." He developed the point with even more emphasis to a brace of visiting British M.P.s. "Bombers are obsolete," he said. "You might as well throw them on the fire. You cannot send human flesh and blood to fight things like that." To keep up the psychological momentum, the Russians announced at week's end the successful testing of a new hydrogen warhead for a guided missile.

The Big Pitch. As usual, in the familiar one-two punch of Soviet diplomacy, threats were accompanied by the offer of "peace." Khrushchev snarled a warning at Turkey (see below), tossed a few ominous remarks in the direction of West Germany ("Adenauer will not be able to start things the way Hitler did''), growled at the U.S. itself: "If a war should break out . . . socialism will live on while capitalism will not remain."

But, said Khrushchev piously, "We Communists never thought and never will think of achieving our objectives by such dreadful means." Instead, with the air of a man talking from strength, Khrushchev declared that Russia would consider accepting international control of space satellites and missiles--"the main thing is for our two countries to agree.'; (In the U.N., U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge said the U.S. might discuss such proposals apart from the general disarmament "package," but only if its allies agreed.)

Khrushchev was clearly using the well-worn Soviet pitch of trying to alienate the U.S. from its allies by making a deal over their heads. With even greater emphasis, he suggested that what was really needed was a general Soviet-American agreement to live and let live. "One thing only is needed for this," he insisted. "That is to recognize that the U.S.S.R. exists as a socialist state, to recognize that China exists as a socialist state, to recognize the existence of other socialist states ... If you recognize this and base your policy on this, instead of relying on some internal forces supposedly capable of liquidating the socialist system, it will be easy to reach agreement on all disputed issues." Such an agreement, as Khrushchev well knows, would indicate to every captive people that the U.S. had abandoned them to their fate forever.

"We Are Not Saints." In retrospect, diplomats realized that Khrushchev's truculence could be traced back as far as last March, when Moscow started bombarding the U.S.'s European allies with notes warning them that they risked extinction by H-bomb if they allowed NATO atomic bases within their borders. At the time, these outbursts were considered individually as nine-day wonders of little more than tactical diplomatic significance. In the eerie light of the Soviet moon, they have taken on a new aspect. At some point along the line Soviet scientists clearly gave Khrushchev advance notice that both the ICBM and the Sputnik were close to realization. Since that moment, whenever it was, Russian aggressiveness has been louder than ever.

A field where Reston clearly stood in' need of guidance. Two days before his Khrushchev interview Scots-born Newsman Reston happily reported, on the strength of an encounter with a Moscow barber, that the U.S.S.R. had ''abolished the iniquitous practice of tipping.'' From fellow Timcsman (and onetime Moscow correspondent) Clifton Daniel came a letter to the Times: "By propagating the myth that tipping has been abolished, Gospodin Reston has unwittingly served Soviet propaganda. At the same time he has probably left a very bad impression on the barber . . . The poor fellow's faith in capitalism may have been undermined."

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