It Costs to Advertise

Nikita Khrushchev got a lot of free space in the Western press three weeks ago with a variation on a familiar theme--replacing Western troops in West Berlin with garrisons from smaller nations. The New York Times printed half a page of excerpts from his 2 1/2-hour speech, and most other papers carried news stories of the proposal. But that apparently was not enough to satisfy the Soviet Premier. Last week the full 14,000 words of Khrushchev's speech appeared in two-and three-page display ads in the New York Herald Tribune, Kansas City Star, Hearst's San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, the Manchester Guardian, Montreal Star, Ottawa Journal and Winnipeg Free Press. Total cost to the Soviet government: $30,603. The Soviets, in following Madison Avenue's ways, still had some lessons to learn: the ads were unrelievedly grey in eye-straining type.

The U.S. ads were placed from Washington by Soviet Embassy Third Secretary Eduard A. Saratov. Saratov said he picked his papers on the basis of their "locations and large circulations." But it was more likely that prevailing ad rates partly governed the choice. In New York, the Tribune, was the only paper solicited.

The only refusal came from the liberal Washington Post. President Philip Graham told the Soviet embassy that the Post would happily print the Khrushchev text in its news columns free if Pravda or Izvestia reciprocated by publishing the full text of President Kennedy's Sept. 25 speech to the United Nations, outlining the U.S. stand for realistically controlled and inspected disarmament. The Russians did not seem interested in the bargain.

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