Unprecedented Feast

While faithfully drafting the commissioned portrait of Peacemaker Khrushchev abroad in a warm and receptive U.S. (TiME. Sept. 28), the Russian press has given the tour a play unprecedented in Soviet journalism. Readers have been treated to a feast of exhaustive, fulsome and extraordinary detail, including pictures of Mrs. Khrushchev--a woman in whose existence Red papers previously betrayed only a passive interest, or none at all. Last week Pravda (circ. 5,500,000), the official party organ, topped all the sensational journalism by publishing the first cartoon of a Soviet leader ever to appear in the Russian Press (see cut).

An almost handsome, beaming, digging Khrushchev, tossing a friendly grin at a speculative Eisenhower and other unidentified observers, says: "Gentlemen, we have some public works to get done. Let's bury the hatchet together." The art was not homegrown, but imported from a satellite, where it first appeared in the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsdg (People's Freedom). Taken with the massive, almost Western-style, gaudy coverage of the Khrushchev tour, the cartoon was enough to set observers wondering. After such unexpected treats, would the Russian reader want to go back to the oldtime, unadorned propaganda diet?

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