After the Fall

The last time a pair of Soviet cosmonauts went whirling around the world, they spent a lot of time on the radio-telephone exchanging compliments with "dear Nikita Sergeevich."

But by the time they got back down to Moscow on Oct. 19, Khrushchev had been deposed in a sudden Kremlin coup. Last week Russia's latest space men (see cover story in SCIENCE) seemed to be taking no chances: their astral greeting was addressed to "the Leninist Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet government." They could have been bolder, for after they fell from orbit, the government was still in the hands of Khrushchev's colorless successors, Premier Aleksei Kosygin and First Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

"Not Now." Nikita must have sensed the irony in the fact that the Kremlin chose last week as the time to trot him out for his first public appearance since his ouster. Western newsmen were tipped off in advance that Nikita would be available for all to see at a Moscow polling place not a mile from the Kremlin. Sure enough, up wheeled a chauffeured car, and out hopped the familiar figure--not quite as pudgy, not quite as ebullient--but undeniably Nikita Khrushchev. Eager Soviet citizens and reporters swarmed around him, anxious to know how he felt. "I feel just like a pensioner," Nikita replied huskily with a tear in his eye. "All right. All right."

It was five months to the day since Khrushchev's lieutenants had deposed him, and this glimpse of him quite naturally raised a lot of questions. How was he faring? Where was he going? What had he been doing lately? Did his reappearance in public signal a possible return to some kind of office? Nikita himself would not or--more likely--could not answer. To requests for an interview, he snapped: "Not now, some time." Still, most of the answers were plain to see.

Limited Trust. The Khrushchevs apparently have been assigned a six-room apartment in a pillared and balconied building next to the Canadian embassy on Staro-Konyushenny (Old Stable) Lane. Another sign of Khrushchev's relatively comfortable retirement was the chauffeur-driven ZIL limousine in which he and Wife Nina rode off from the apartment last week. They were headed just around the corner to vote in the municipal elections. Walking under a huge sign that read "Dobro Pozhalovat" (Welcome), Khrushchev waved off a voting official who signaled him to the head of the line. When he reached the table, a young woman poll watcher asked him for his identity papers before handing him his ballot. "Don't you trust me?" Khrushchev quipped. "Yes," said the girl with a blush, "of course we trust you."

She might, but did the Kremlin? Khrushchev's freedom is clearly no more than nominal. Touched as he was by the crowd's interest, Nikita could not talk freely. Obviously, he is on a leash, being paraded at the Kremlin's will and for its own purposes. Right now at least, those seem to be merely to reassure indignant European Communists--and the world at large--that Nikita is alive, healthy, and not being treated too badly.

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