The Boss Is Back

Looking fit, sunned and a trifle slimmed after his seven-week Black Sea vacation, Nikita Khrushchev bounced back into Moscow last week--and immediately things began happening. Even before he arrived, the Kremlin air crackled with premonitory flashes as the big boss, like a storm thundering over the horizon, moved slowly northward toward his desk, fulminating all sorts of commands and imprecations as he advanced. Far south in the Caucasus he rumbled darkly of the wholesale overhaul he plans for the Soviet school system, warned all parents that his project of sending all teen-agers out for two years' work before finishing their schooling cannot be put off till their "dear little Sashenkas and Mashenkas have first got safely through."

Catching Up with the East. At the North Caucasian city of Stavropol he loosed a proud thunderbolt: "When the figures for the Soviet Seven-Year-Plan (1959-65) become known, the whole world will be amazed at the prospects of the development of the socialist society." From Trade Union Chief Viktor Grishin in Moscow came a few figures to match, promising to achieve by '65 what had originally been targeted for 1972:

Steel--91 million tons, a 68% increase over 1958.

Iron Ore--247 million tons, a 179% increase.

Pig Iron--70 million tons, up 80%.

Cement--82 million tons, a 152% increase.

The most fascinating fact about these staggering figures, which were leaked to foreign correspondents, was that they did not appear in the Soviet press. Soviet specialists in Washington think that the targeted growth can be achieved only by a new emphasis on heavy industry, during which the consumer will not get less than he has been getting--he may perhaps get even a little more--but less than he has been promised. They conclude that reasons of international power have prevailed over consumer goods, and Khrushchev believes he can get away with it because the Russian consumer at least has more than he once had.

To reach such goals, Khrushchev will not only have to raid Soviet high schools for manpower but also command a Soviet working force of heroic sobriety. Rolling on to his native village of Kalinovka on the northern edge of the Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev declared war on demon rum. "The government is now drafting sterner measures against this evil." he told the villagers. "In restaurants we shall establish this rule: if you order spirits, you will be served one shot, but a second shot will be prohibited. Some may say so what; if they don't serve us in this restaurant, we will go to another and drink a second glass. Let them go! Those who like five shots will have to go to five restaurants. They will sober up as they go from one to the other."

Back at his desk to get his new program in shape for announcement at next week's 41st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Khrushchev leaped nimbly back into his old round of international politicking. He talked long with U.S. Columnist Walter Lippmann, told a Brazilian journalist "we could supply Soviet machines and specialists to Brazil." In his most formal black hat he welcomed Polish Communist Chief Wladyslaw Gomulka at the rainswept Byelorussian station for an important party visit. But his flashing feat of the week was bringing off an international propaganda coup in the Arab Middle East.

Yes, We Have No Bananas. Turning up at Moscow's Hotel Sovetskaya for his first diplomatic reception since last summer, Nikita carefully nursed one small shot of vodka all evening as he toasted visiting General Hakim Amer, Nasser's grinning top soldier, and roasted "the imperialists and colonialists who try to rob and impose a perpetual yoke on the Arab people." The Soviet Union, "which harbors no such ambitions because it possesses all they have except bananas," said Khrushchev, "will not give a kopeck" to any joint East-West program for economic assistance. "We will help them ourselves." At a Kremlin reception two days later, Premier Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union had agreed to advance the U.A.R. 400 million rubles ($40 million at the tourist rate) to help Nasser build the Aswan High Dam.

This, as every listener to Cairo's Voice of the Arabs knows, is the same high dam that the U.S. proposed, then refused to underwrite before Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The news went over big in the Middle East. A pro-Western Beirut newspaper cried approvingly: "The Soviet Union has taken the place of the West on the banks of the Nile to help Nasser at long last to build the Pyramid of the 20th century."

If Nasser sets out to build his $1.3 billion, three-mile dam, the Soviet credit--on easy long-term loan--will be but a drop in the bucket. Perhaps Khrushchev's cracks at joint East-West aid were an attempt to head off any Nasser move now to get Western help in making the dam a reality. But Khrushchev's bold gesture stirred Arab gratitude, and Nasser had his own domestic reasons for making it sound bigger and better than it actually was.

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