Coronation of the Czar

In the history-steeped halls of the Kremlin, where Czars were crowned, the 1,378 comrade Deputies of the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. assembled amid all the panoply and portent of a Communist coronation. Kleig lights blazed down from the Corinthian capitals of St. Andrew's Hall; diplomats and newsmen packed the galleries, photographers jammed the aisles. At one minute past 5 o'clock, the top half-dozen Communist bosses entered from the side, led by bald Nikita Khrushchev with his two Orders of Lenin gleaming from his dark lapel. Joining Russian-fashion in the applause for themselves, the stubby commissars made their way to the front seats on the platform.

All Moscow knew that the Central Committee had held a decisive meeting, and the dutiful Deputies sensed that they were to be called on to ratify changes in what the comrades are pleased to call the vanguard of the dictatorship of the Soviet proletariat. Moscow's talk centered around the premiership. Marshal Bulganin. the goateed. pleasantly plump palace commissar who had held the job for the last three years, had hesitated too long about supporting Khrushchev in last June's party leadership struggle and had received far fewer nominations than other Politburocrats for last month's Supreme Soviet elections. Now Bulganin took a seat in the second row.

Up front sat Khrushchev, with Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan beside him whispering in his ear; next, to their right, sat Party Secretaries Alexei Kirichenko and Mikhail Suslov.

The Dictator Proposes. A party official read off the routine resignation of the old government. Then old (77) President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Kliment Voroshilov--just re-elected to another term in his largely honorific post --strode briskly to the rostrum and took his stand behind the massed mikes. Deputies leaned forward, earphones clamped on their heads. In the expectant silence, the whirring of movie cameras could be heard.

"In the name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party." said Voroshilov, "I propose as Chairman of the Council of Ministers [i.e., Premier] our dear comrade Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then reporters ran for their telephones; the Deputies rose clapping their hands. In his second-row seat on the platform, wearing a frozen smile. Bulganin joined in the applause for his successor. Khrushchev himself stood for seconds with head bowed until, unable to control himself, he clasped his hands over his head and grinned in a boxer's triumphal salute.

When the hall quieted. Voroshilov launched into a eulogy more lavish than any heard since Stalin's death. The marshal praised Khrushchev as defender of "Leninist ideas," rectifier of Stalin's "mistakes." "untiring champion of peace," architect of a "majestic housing program." victor over "antiparty plotters" such as Malenkov and Molotov. Because of Khrushchev's "exceptionally fruitful work." he concluded, "it has been decided that Nikita Sergeevich should [also] remain in his post as First Secretary" of the Communist Party.

The Dictator Accepts. Every right hand in the hall except Khrushchev's shot up in favor of the motion. Khrushchev sat with bowed head. Cheers volleyed off the walls. Mikoyan and the others wrung the boss's hand. Khrushchev stepped to the rostrum to say with apparent emotion; "I shall do everything to justify your confidence and shall not spare strength, health or life to serve you."

Thus, installed in office with the most punctilious attention to the "socialist legality'' he has made such a point of. Khrushchev went on to make a 2 1/2-hour speech for his big reform of 1958--a program of boosting farm output (or "catching up with the U.S.." as he puts it) by taking tractors and other farm machinery from state-run "machine pools" and turning them over to the collective farms.

In the space of a few minutes. Nikita Khrushchev had brushed aside the myth of collective leadership and gathered to himself formal command over both the Soviet government and the Communist Party. No man except Stalin had held both jobs simultaneously before (Malenkov held both for a few transitional days in 1953 ), and even Stalin, who could have taken the premiership any time he chose, found it wise to wait 19 years for what

Khrushchev had snatched in five years.

As Premier. Khrushchev has direct control over both the army and the secret police; there will be small chance for the rise of another Zhukov. But in the realities of Communist power, Khrushchev has already wielded that power, has been unabashedly making the Soviet government's decisions for some time. Commented Democratic U.S. Senator Mike Mansfield pungently: "The only difference is that the guy who used to dictate the letters now is signing them."

There was one overt difference, and it was aimed at the summit. At Geneva,

Khrushchev had been forced to go through the pretense of deference while Bulganin sat down to talk with Eisenhower and the other heads of government. Now Khrushchev could dispense with stooges and talk man to man--and nimble-witted Nikita Khrushchev would like nothing better than such a talk with Ike Eisenhower and Harold Macmillan.

First Among Equals. Aptest pupil in Stalin's school of political power, Khrushchev brought a new technique to Communist maneuver. Not even Stalin could match his deft juggling of friend and foe in shifting combinations and permutations. Moving into the key post of party secretary after Stalin's death, he teamed with Malenkov and Marshal Zhukov in 1953 to liquidate Secret Police Boss Beria. But that was the last time he had recourse to Stalin's murderous methods of eliminating rivals. When he joined with Molotov and Kaganovich to force Malenkov out of the premiership in 1955, the ousted Malenkov was merely demoted to the harmless Ministry of Electric Power Stations, and kept around for the back row of group pictures. With the help of Marshal Zhukov, Khrushchev defeated last year's drive by Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich to overthrow him, and then turned on the marshal. In this imposing progress down murderer's row, Bulganin was Khrushchev's ninth major victim. Moscow diplomats guessed that Bulganin, who is said to have taken increasingly to the bottle of late, might hang on to his Presidium seat for a while as a Deputy Premier.

Despite his consolidation of power, experts find it hard to look on Khrushchev as a second Stalin. In an awakening Russia, he has unfrozen Stalin's terror--and may find it beyond icing over once more. Impelled by forces beneath him and by his own ebullient temperament, he plunges on, trying with one showy experiment after another--from corn planting in the arctic to barnstorming in the Burmese boondocks--to make good by perpetually making things happen, by addressing himself to the lowly and the great, afraid of nothing and nobody. With bland smiles he has proclaimed that Communism can triumph without war. In a telling addition to "Leninism" that Pravda may shortly be calling "Khrushchevism," he has embarked on a bold program of economic aid to uncommitted neutrals that challenges the free world's leadership in the Middle East and Asia.

The End as Beginning. Soviet newspapers flowered last week in a whole new cult of the individual. A movie of the Battle of Stalingrad is now being shown in Russia in which Stalin's part is slashed to a mere mention and great swatches of film have been added to make Premier Khrushchev, sometime political lieutenant general, seem like the virtual architect of Soviet Russia's greatest World War II victory. Yet the elevation of Khrushchev to monopoly of the highest Soviet posts (a bare nine months after he was almost overthrown) also served to complete a Soviet cycle. If, as Washington experts believe, Khrushchev has attained to a stable authority in this, his 64th year, those who must henceforth be moving forward to supplant this "last comrade in arms of Stalin" must come of the next generation.

Khrushchev himself has risen as far as the machine and its furious momentum can carry a master political machinist. The only direction he can go now is down unless, as his consequences overtake his actions, he drives on for Stalin's type of czardom and sets out to kill all comers.

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