Mir i Druzhba

Between the acts of Swan Lake one evening last week, the Vice President of the U.S. and his lady strolled to the front entrance of the mammoth opera house that is the pride of Novosibirsk, the raw young industrial city (pop. 877,000) sometimes called "the Chicago of Siberia." From the impatient, densely packed crowd milling in front of the theater a female voice shouted: "Say something to us!"

Raising his arm for silence, Nixon shouted back: "My wife and I want to thank the people of Novosibirsk for your very warm welcome." There was a sharp burst of applause, and a few sentences later, when Nixon wound up his impromptu speech with the wish, "May Novosibirsk grow as big as Chicago," security men were hard put to rescue him unbruised from a rib-crushing onsurge of Siberians determined to shake his hand.

Implicit in this mob scene was a fact that came clear from Richard Nixon's Russian tour: after 40 years of relentless indoctrination in the evils of "imperialistic U.S. capitalism," the majority of the Russian people still like Americans, even if they may also think them odd.

The Lodge Brothers. Earlier in the week, flying into Leningrad in an Aero-null null Nixon found himself with unexpected traveling companions--Soviet No. 2 Man Frol Kozlov (TIME, July 13) and his auburn-haired wife. Leningrader Kozlov's presence on the plane was proof positive that Nikita Khrushchev had recovered from the peevishness over Captive Nations Week that had inspired his jaw-dropping "kitchen summit" with Nixon at the U.S. fair in Moscow fortnight ago. Smiling Frol, who seemed to regard Nixon as a lodge brother in the freemasonry of politicians, saw to it that the Nixons got a proper Leningrad welcome.

Sure enough, waiting at Leningrad airport was a friendly, waving crowd--including one Red Chinese who mystified all present by grabbing Nixon's hand and blurting out an apparently cheery but unintelligible greeting. Politician Nixon proceeded to give Politician Kozlov a boost with the home folks. "Mr. Kozlov," Nixon informed the crowd, "told me several times that one cannot come to the Soviet Union without visiting Leningrad." "Da!" interjected Kozlov loudly as his fellow citizens chuckled. "These are your constituents," grinned Nixon.

"Nonsense." This jovial atmosphere cooled when Nixon & Co. were taken to visit the 16,000-ton Lenin, Russia's vaunted atomic icebreaker, and Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover asked to visit the ship's reactor room--only to be told that it was "closed" for the day. "Nonsense," snapped Atomic Expert Rickover, "the reactor room is never closed." From Nixon himself Rickover got the firm order: "You stay here an extra day if necessary, and say that it is our understanding that you see just as much as Kozlov saw in the U.S."

Reluctantly the Russians gave way, allowed Rickover to crawl all over the Lenin (which he pronounced "a creditable job"). As the terrible-tempered admiral finally prepared to leave, a Russian official asked him if he was satisfied. "No," said Hyman Rickover. "I am pleased, but I am never satisfied."

Adam's Fall. From the Lenin, Kozlov and Nixon went on to play "Can You Top This?" at Peterhof, Peter the Great's lavish palace, with its trick garden gadgets to douse the unwary with fountain sprays. When Nixon tried out his rudimentary Russian on the crowd in the gardens, Kozlov topped him by commenting in rudimentary English: "Very good." Then, recalling that the Peterhofs 560 statues had been buried for safety during the Nazis' World War II siege of the city, Kozlov pointed to figures of Adam and Eve, separated by a wide garden, and cracked: "Adam and Eve are always separated, but during the war we buried them together."

"Adam and Eve created a lot of trouble," replied Nixon, deadpan. "Oh," protested a member of the crowd, "they created the world." "That," smiled Nixon, "is what I mean."

No Eggs. Next day Nixon and his swelling entourage--"This is beginning to look like Coxey's Army," cracked one U.S. correspondent--headed east to Russia's great Siberian hinterland, where the earth is black and rich, and sunflowers (grown for their commercial oil) lattice the countryside with gold. Here, in "closed" cities that no Americans save a handful of dignitaries have been allowed-to visit in years, Nixon's trip turned into an impromptu triumph.

From cheering Novosibirsk, Nixon moved on to Sverdlovsk, where the Bolsheviks shot Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, then drove deep into the Urals to visit a copper mine and Russia's largest tube and pipe plant. At every log-cabin village and dusty crossroads, hundreds of peasants gathered to wave and cheer Nixon--and they stayed on for hours to do the same for the caravan of reporters and U.S. officials strung out along the road behind him.

Along with the welcoming crowds appeared another new phenomenon: aggressive industrial workers who elbowed their way up to Nixon to do some well-rehearsed heckling. Soviet Cultural Exchange Boss Georgy A. Zhukov all but admitted that the hecklers were government plants--a form of revenge for some of the rebuffs handed to Mikoyan and Kozlov during their U.S. visits. "Your workers," Zhukov blandly told Nixon, "expressed their point of view by throwing rotten eggs, but our workers express their opinion by asking questions. That isn't so bad."

The Lecturer. The hecklers' assault began at a hydroelectric dam near Novosibirsk, where 30-year-old Electrician Grigory Fedorovich Belousov thrust himself forward and proclaimed belligerently: "The Soviet Union has no military bases outside her borders, but the U.S. has many in foreign countries. Why is that, I'd like to know?"

Nixon: When we can agree on disarmament with adequate inspection, then we can talk about the question of bases. Now I'd like to ask you a question.

Belousov (angrily): I'm not satisfied with that answer.

Nixon: In East Germany, in Poland and in Bulgaria, the Soviet Union has her troops. Why are your troops there?

Belousov: We have no forces there.

Nixon (loudly but with evident impatience): Is Poland your country? Is Hungary your country? Is East Germany your country? Then why do you have troops there?

Belousov (poking his finger close to Nixon's chest): There are American and Western troops in Germany, and the Soviet Union has to maintain forces for that reason.

Nixon (as the electrician began to shout): He's like Mr. Khrushchev--he always gets the last word.

From then on, at stop after stop, Nixon was met with a steady drumfire of hostile questions: Is the U.S. really for peace? Why does the Voice of America "pour filth" on the Soviet Union? Why doesn't the U.S. recognize Red China? Aware of the Communist tactic, but also mindful of an audience whose sympathy he might win, Nixon gave restrained but unyielding answers, pounding away endlessly at Russia's jamming of U.S. broadcasts and its refusal to give the Russian people a chance to choose freely between conflicting "truths." At Uralmash, the Siberian plant that has made so many machine tools that it is called "the Mother of Factories," Nixon told a heckling foreman: "I can tell from talking to you that you are a highly intelligent man who has studied the world situation . . . Why should somebody else tell you that you can listen to this radio broadcast but not that, and say, 'Oh no, we don't let you hear this because it is slander'?"

At other times the questioners were obviously men in earnest. The exchanges would never become textbook classics in political dialogue--for one thing, constant translations seemed to bring out a simplified pidgin style of discourse. And the cold war has reached a point where the same dialogue works for both sides: Nixon got his biggest cheers and widest smiles by calling out that old Communist slogan, Mir i Druzhba (Peace and Friendship). It was what everybody wanted to hear, wanted to believe.

The Reason Why. Having planted the notion of free and peaceful interchange in at least a few Siberian minds, Nixon, tired but still eager, flew back to Moscow to deliver his farewell speech on radio and TV. While Nixon .was busy writing hi's script, Nikita Khrushchev, just back himself from a trip to the Ukraine, showed up unexpectedly at Moscow Airport to inspect the two Boeing 707 jets waiting to take the Nixon party on to Warsaw. Though dissatisfied with the highball proffered him--"You Americans spoil whisky. There's more ice than whisky in this"--Khrushchev was visibly impressed with Nixon's VIP-eouipped 707, and jokingly invited crack Russian Aircraft Designer Andrei Tupolev, standing near by, to "try to steal" some of the ideas. "It's a very well-made plane," he said.

Quickly, a reporter moved in: "How would you like to fly to the U.S. in it?" At that point, with careful casualness, Russia's boss drew Washington's attention to the chief reason he had been willing to allow the Soviet man in the street opportunity to cheer Richard Nixon. "This plane or some other one." he shrugged. "That is not a question of principle." How soon did he want to visit the U.S.? "When the time is ripe," said Nikita. "In good time."

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