Behind the Curtain

Through the Kremlin's massive Spassky Gate one day last week hurried Democrat Adlai Stevenson, headed for the office of Russia's Premier Nikita Khrushchev. After a brief chitchat warmup, Khrushchev surged into familiar accusations of U.S. "imperialism," possibly thinking that a twice-defeated presidential candidate of the U.S. out-party might agree with him. Far from it. Through interpreters, Stevenson briskly defended Administration foreign policies, riled Khrushchev by bringing up the brutal Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956. Khrushchev urged Stevenson to talk to Hungarian government officials and hear the true story for himself. Stevenson retorted: "The Hungarian government I refer to no longer exists."

Despite the flare-up over Hungary, the meeting lasted 2 1/2 hours and ended amicably, but Stevenson left looking grim. He was depressed to find inside the Kremlin exactly what he had found outside it during his four-week tour of the Soviet Union: "Misunderstanding and ignorance about the U.S. and the ideas it stands for." Stevenson's proposed remedy: "A much wider and freer exchange of ideas and information, as well as of tourists, artists and athletes."

Along with misunderstanding of his country, Stevenson met with warm hospitality toward himself. Accompanied by his sons John Fell, 22, and Borden, 26, Law Partner William M. Blair, and Russian Specialist Robert Tucker, he found official smiles and small but friendly crowds in big cities, rural hamlets, Siberian industrial towns rarely seen by Westerners. Among the trip's happiest chapters: a lavish official picnic in a forest near Sverdlovsk, within sight of a boundary marker inscribed "Europe" on one side and "Asia" on the other; a leisurely trip up the Volga in a side-wheel steamer left over from Czarist days. "Everywhere I went," said Stevenson politely at a farewell reception in Moscow, "I saw signs and heard speeches urging people to catch up with American production of butter, milk and meat, but in one area you don't have to catch up with America, and that is hospitality."

But for all the smiles, Lawyer Stevenson made no measurable progress in the mission that took him behind the Iron Curtain: trying to persuade Soviet officialdom to pay author's royalties to Stevenson clients (including Pearl Buck, John Hersey, Arthur Miller, Upton Sinclair) whose works are published in the Soviet Union. Said Stevenson wanly before heading for Warsaw and points west: "The Minister of Culture is studying the matter further."

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