Hurrah for Whose Bomb?

Early one morning last week, the phone rang for Nikita Khrushchev at the elegant Chateau Rambouillet, country residence of France's Presidents. On the other end of the line was Soviet Ambassador to France Sergei Vinogradov with the news that France had just exploded in the Sahara its second atomic bomb--a small one, roughly the size of the U.S.'s Hiroshima bomb (20 kilotons), but far closer to being a portable, functional weapon than the first 60-to 70-kiloton French bomb.

As the world's most belligerent peace lover, and loud public opponent of all nuclear testing, could Nikita avoid denouncing France in strong terms? The answer came clear when, after a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, Khrushchev encountered De Gaulle in Rambouillet's 16th century Hall of Marble. "Hurrah for France!" cried Nikita.

The Man from Agitprop. This was the keynote of the second half of Khrushchev's tour de France. At times, Nikita seemed intent on establishing himself as a kind of honorary Frenchman. His family helped. Motherly Nina Khrushchev admired acres of stained-glass windows, trudged through an open-air market where she expertly sniffed at a proffered melon.

Daughters Rada, Elena and Julia ogled the spring fashions at Dior's. Nikita himself genially traded stag jokes with French influentials, beamingly invited a handsome girl folk dancer to visit him in Moscow, and clutched to his bosom everything from lambs to schoolchildren. And during a flight in one of France's handsome jet Caravelles, which he vocally admired, he set the hearts of French industrialists aflutter with the offhand statement: "I'll take a dozen to start with."

Despite his best efforts, Nikita's essential boorishness occasionally broke through: to the proud director of a vast irrigation project in the Camargue, he remarked that Russia had a far vaster project in Tadzhikistan. And the apparent popular enthusiasm that greeted him wherever he turned was largely synthetic.

As he progressed through France's heavily leftist south, local Communists, augmented by busloads of comrades from afar, took over key positions along his route and at prearranged signals waved red flags and chanted admiring slogans. In Marseille, where the shouts were loudest, Khrushchev Son-in-Law (and Izvestia Editor) Alexei Adzhubei admiringly remarked to Soviet Propaganda Boss Leonid Ilyichev: "Comrade, you always handle the Agitprop well!" Spiking the Canon. Clicking away insatiably, Soviet cameramen captured scenes of enthusiasm designed to convince movie audiences behind the Iron Curtain that all France had embraced Nikita.

Truth was that, apart from the organized knots of Reds, the crowds that turned out to see Khrushchev were mostly just curious--ancl often silent. And throughout the tour, Nikita was confronted by the weighty displeasure of France's Catholic hierarchy. Priests were forbidden to receive him in their churches. In Reims the Host was removed from the altar of the cathedral before Khrushchev was shown through--and a purification service was held after he had left. The church even succeeded in spiking one of the anticipated triumphs of the Agitprop men--Nikita's scheduled meeting with Canon Felix Kir, the 84-year-old priest who doubles as mayor of Dijon and is an Independent Deputy in France's National Assembly.

A genial, roly-poly man who glories in the title "most independent of the Independents," Canon Kir is a much-decorated, bullet-scarred hero of France's World War II Resistance, during which he helped more than 5,000 French prisoners escape the Germans. He spends little time in the mayor's office, can more often be found directing Dijon's traffic, perched at the top of a fireman's ladder, or passing the time of day in a workers' bistro. Convinced that Khrushchev's professed desire to end the cold war must be taken at face value, the canon weeks ago announced that if he got the chance, he would welcome Khrushchev to Dijon with a Russian-style embrace.

Fortnight ago, after his bishop sternly forbade him to receive Nikita, Canon Kir reluctantly agreed to obey. But neither church nor state had any real confidence that the canon could resist if Nikita came to call. Accordingly, on the morning of the day Khrushchev was due to arrive in Dijon, two police cars pulled up in front of Canon Kir's house and hustled the furiously gesticulating priest off for a long drive in the country.

The German Gambit. Though he passed off Kir's "kidnaping" with aplomb ("Canon Kir is absent physically, but spiritually he is with us"), Khrushchev was clearly conscious of the depth of Catholic hostility to him. Carefully, he told reporters: "I agree with Christ in most of his teachings. Besides, they fit Communism. There is only one point where I do not agree: when Christ says one has to turn the other cheek. For me, if a man strikes me on the cheek, I knock his head off." Nikita's preference for knocking heads became clear after a visit to Douaumont, where thousands of the French and German soldiers who fell at Verdun in World War I are buried. As French Minister of State Louis Jacquinot launched into a polite speech recalling the sacrifices France has made in repelling "invaders," Nikita cut in: "Name them, name them! Who invaded you?" Seizing the microphone, he went on: "I have not had the background of a diplomat. I grew up among the children of the streets and the mines, the sons of workers. My abruptness is not a sign of violence but of frankness." With this standard gambit of Soviet diplomacy--provocation excused as plain speaking--Nikita was off on another anti-German diatribe. "I tell you," he said, "I am worried. I am worried by the words pronounced in Rome by [West German] Chancellor Adenauer that God has invested Germany with the special mission of saving Europe . . . This is the rebirth of Hitler's theory of a master race . . . Vengeance is being reborn in Germany." Down on the Farm. His tour ended, all that was left was to dicker with De Gaulle at Rambouillet. While Madame de Gaulle and Nina Khrushchev visited the little Rambouillet dairy originally created as a plaything for Marie Antoinette, the husbands walked the sandy paths of the chateau grounds, plowing through the whole range of East-West problems: disarmament, Algeria, Berlin, and the future of Germany. Out of their talks came a five-page communique. The volume of the prose was an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the lack of agreement in nearly every major area. Its chief news (apart from the fact that De Gaulle will visit Moscow) was that France and Russia had agreed to an exchange of scientific data --including information on the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

At week's end, Nikita took off for Moscow. He had tried to stir up trouble between France and its allies--and had failed. He had repeatedly revealed that behind his folksy mask lay an arrogant brutality. But it must be counted a plus for Moscow that Nikita's uninhibited peasant vitality somehow seemed to reduce "the Soviet menace" to human dimensions. Reflecting on his performance, many Frenchmen, rightly or wrongly, were now inclined to accept one of Khrushchev's own favorite sayings about himself and Russia's Communists: "A little courage--we do not have horns."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.