Eleanor

by Joseph P. Lash

  She tried to understand what was happening in Soviet Russia by looking at the country through the eyes of its people. The most important thing she learned about the Soviet Union she summed up in the formula—Lenin and Pavlov. As she watched thousands of Soviet citizens patiently queue up outside of the tomb of Lenin—and, at that time, the tomb of Stalin as well—she realized that it was through the teachings of these two men—and chiefly that of Lenin—that the Soviet citizen saw his society and the world, and that this vision embodied relentless hostility to the West. And in a visit to a pediatrics institute in Leningrad, it dawned on her that the Pavlovian system of conditioning children embodied the methods by which the Russians as a whole were turned into a “completely disciplined and amenable people.”8

  It frightened her that this vast apparatus of discipline and power was dedicated to the triumph of Communism, and it frightened her even more that her own people misread the danger as primarily military. She thought the immediate arena of challenge was in the Third World, where the Soviet model of forced industrialization seemed more relevant than the American model of free enterprise to the leaders of the developing nations. The abstract talk of democracy, to which America’s leaders were so addicted, seemed to her meaningless. The freedom that primarily interested the peoples of Asia and Africa was the freedom to eat, she wrote after her return.9

  As her trip drew to an end, she still had no answer to her request to see Khrushchev. She had just returned from Sochi, on the Black Sea, and was saying her good-bys to various government officials preparatory to departure, when Mrs. Lavrova informed her abruptly: “I forgot to tell you, but we go to Yalta early tomorrow morning.” That meant a thousand-mile trip back to the Black Sea. Mrs. Roosevelt was so irritated with this rude way of doing things that she was scarcely able to reply. “Well,” she said. “I’m glad you finally remembered!”10

  Early the following morning, she flew to Yalta with David and Mrs. Lavrova, spent the night in a Yalta hotel, and managed, in the hour before Khrushchev’s car came to fetch them the next morning, to visit the palace where the Yalta conference took place. Khrushchev’s villa on the outskirts of Yalta was comfortable but not ostentatious. The Soviet leader, bareheaded, in a white, handsomely bordered peasant’s blouse, came to greet her. He was relaxed and friendly and first insisted on showing her about the grounds. Then the group settled itself on the porch, and David placed the portable tape recorder that they had brought from the United States just for this occasion on the table. Khrushchev made a little speech about FDR and then the interview began. It soon turned into a debate about which nation was responsible for the cold war, the arms race, the violation of the Yalta agreements, the tensions in the Middle East, with Khrushchev’s hearty peasant vehemence sometimes shading into red-faced anger and with Mrs. Roosevelt upholding her viewpoint graciously, but with equal firmness. It was inconclusive, as all such debates, inside the UN and out, had been since the end of World War II. The discussion took on the flavor of practicality only when Mrs. Roosevelt challenged Khrushchev on the subject of Soviet treatment of the Jews. When, in answer, he cited the many Jews of high rank in the Soviet Army and elsewhere, she was not satisfied. “That may be but it is very difficult for any Jew to leave the Soviet Union to settle or even visit Israel.”

  “I know,” Khrushchev answered defensively, “but the time will come when everyone who wants to go will be able to go.”11

  It was a long two-and-a-half-hour interview. The visit ended on a family note—a table laden with delicacies and Khrushchev’s whole family joining them.

  “Can I tell our papers that we have had a friendly conversation?” Khrushchev asked as he bid her good-by.

  “You can say,” she replied, “that we had a friendly conversation but that we differ.”

  He laughed. “At least we didn’t shoot each other.”

  She departed from Moscow the next day. “I was oh! so happy when our airplane, flying out of Moscow, touched down at Copenhagen.” It was only after she was in the Danish capital “and heard laughter and gay talk and saw faces that were unafraid that I realized how different were our two worlds. Suddenly, I could breath again!”12

  She arrived back in the United States as the world was reverberating to the news of the first Soviet sputnik, a spectacular development in science and technology that Soviet propagandists were exploiting to suggest that the balance of power was moving in favor of the Soviets. There was that possibility, Mrs. Roosevelt thought. Khrushchev was “honest” when he told her that war was unthinkable, she told interviewers, because he and other Soviet leaders “have made up their minds they can win what they want without war.” Khrushchev was committed to coexistence but it was “competitive coexistence,” and the West, especially the United States, could not afford to be complacent. The need was to turn it into “cooperative coexistence.” “It seems to me,” she wrote Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who hoped for a long talk with Mrs. Roosevelt about her Russian trip, “we have reached a place where it is not a question of ‘can we live in the same world and cooperate’ but ‘we must live in the same world and learn to cooperate.’”13

  She never gave up trying to establish on a personal basis points of communication and cooperation with the Russians. Many of the Soviet delegations that visited the United States were her guests. She visited the Soviet Union again in 1958. And a year later, when Khrushchev toured the United States as a guest of President Eisenhower, he accepted her invitation to visit Hyde Park even though in the interim, at the suggestion of the Russian-born novelist Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., she had written him to protest Russia’s refusal to permit Boris Pasternak to accept the Nobel Prize.14

  The visit to Hyde Park was a hectic expedition, as were most of Khrushchev’s travels in the United States. There was, however, a moment of the deepest solemnity and ceremony when Khrushchev, preceded by two aides carrying a large floral wreath and followed by Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Khrushchev, walked to FDR’s grave in the rose garden and placed the wreath at the graveside. It bore the inscription:

  TO THE OUTSTANDING STATESMAN OF THE

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA—

  THE GREAT CHAMPION OF PROGRESS

  AND PEACE AMONG PEOPLES.

  CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE

  UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

  N. S. KHRUSHCHEV.

  Khrushchev stood for a moment in silence, his head bowed, and then Mrs. Roosevelt led him to the Big House and library for hurried inspections and finally to her cottage at Val-Kill, where she offered him tea, coffee, and cake. But there was little time. It was all “very rush-rush,” she said later. “He enjoyed nothing. A man behind him all the time kept whispering, ‘seven minutes. . .seven minutes.’” As he came out of her cottage, he held up a seed roll for the photographers and said in Russian, “one for the road.” Back in New York, Khrushchev sent her a handsome shawl. “Tell your wife and daughter,” she wrote, “if they are here and in need of any help in shopping, I can easily arrange to give them guidance.”15

  In 1960 Khrushchev returned to the United States, this time uninvited. He came for the UN General Assembly, to make anti-western demonstrations. He was in the midst of his quarrel with the Chinese. In her opinion, he “behaved outrageously.” He savagely attacked Hammerskjöld. He interrupted speakers. He banged his shoe on the desk. It was a hooligan performance. Nevertheless, she invited him to tea, and he accepted. When people criticized her for having done a “dreadful thing,” she coolly replied that it was just politeness, that he had gotten nothing to eat when he had last been to Hyde Park and so she had to make it up to him. She was greatly relieved that he did not bring up the United Nations during his visit, for “I would have had to have been rude.” Instead, they argued economics—he boasting about the Soviet economic progress and she asking whether the Soviet consumer would be the beneficiary, he replying that the Soviet goal was the four-hour day and she innocently asking whether he had begun to educ
ate his people on how to use their leisure time. Khrushchev was not indifferent to her arguments. The next morning a stack of books arrived from him, all in English and with little paper slips in them marking the pages on which he had underlined passages bolstering his case. To those who attacked her for having talked with the Soviet premier, she said:

  We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.16

  At Hyde Park in September, 1959, just before Khrushchev’s arrival, she was asked whether she expected to have extensive talks with the Soviet premier. “He has no interest in me whatsoever,” she replied. “I have no power. That gentleman likes power.” The ladylike denial that she had any power or any acquaintance with the uses thereof was characteristic. Often when she was asked her opinion on a political matter and did not wish to commit herself, she mildly insisted, “I know nothing of politics,” a bit of guile that was part of her feminine stock in trade. When a young man proposed to do a thesis on her political influence, she brought him to Dr. Elizabeth Drewry, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. “Please tell him that I have no influence and that he will be wasting his time.”17

  She was, of course, an astute politician and at times could be as implacable and unforgetting as FDR and Louis Howe in avenging a treachery. That was the case with Franklin Jr.’s defeat for state-wide office in 1954. Tammany Hall, which Franklin Jr. had bested in 1949 when he defeated its candidate for Congress, retaliated five years later when the county heads, led by Carmine De Sapio, leader of Tammany and Democratic National committeeman, turned down his bid for the gubernatorial nomination, giving it to Averell Harriman. His mother had warned him, “Don’t ever trust him,” referring to De Sapio, when Franklin told her that De Sapio had advised him to come to the convention as the upstate candidate in order to avoid the “big city boss” stigma. Denial of the gubernatorial nomination was a setback to Franklin’s political hopes, but since he was nominated for attorney general it was also an opportunity, especially if he were to run ahead of the ticket in November. Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been sitting with Franklin Jr. and his wife in a little room at the back of the armory, was the only one to suggest he might lose, adding, however, “They may never forgive you if you don’t run.” Disaster came on Election Day when Franklin was the only state-wide loser—to Jacob K. Javits—in a Democratic sweep. “F jr. was defeated because they put a very good Jew against him,” she wrote Uncle David. “Ordinarily he has the Jewish vote but much of it had to vote for a good Jew. Then De Sapio & Buckley in Manhattan & the Bronx cut him in the Italian & Irish votes.”18

  Deeply unhappy for her son, Mrs. Roosevelt, although she was aware of Franklin’s shortcomings, in time came to hold De Sapio primarily responsible for his defeat. Franklin’s political team disbanded. He moved to Washington to concentrate on his law and business interests. Mrs. Roosevelt, however, did not forget. If the chance came, she would even the score.

  This was not the only reason for the relentless duel with De Sapio that now began. In 1956 he again ran afoul of her when he not only politically masterminded Harriman’s bid for the presidential nomination against Stevenson but kept Stevenson supporters off the New York delegation, despite Stevenson’s popularity in the state, and gave him only listless support in the campaign.

  In 1958, at the Buffalo state convention, De Sapio publicly affronted Mrs. Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and Governor Harriman by hand-picking New York District Attorney Frank Hogan for the senatorial nomination over Thomas K. Finletter and Thomas E. Murray. Normally a good soldier in Democratic ranks, she was by now so indignant with De Sapio that it overflowed against Hogan. The Democrats could have had a nominee “who knew more about foreign policy” was her “Meet the Press” comment on Hogan’s candidacy, a damaging statement that was only partially offset by an election-eve clarification that she intended to vote for him.

  Her distrust of De Sapio was so great that she voiced the theory as the campaign drew to a close that he would arrange matters in such a way that Harriman lost while Hogan won.19

  Not exactly the most popular figure at Democratic headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel that election night, she sensed the hostility in the room and, pleading that she could not stand the photographers, left a few minutes after putting in an appearance. When it became clear Harriman and Hogan both had lost, she crisply voiced the hope that the defeat would mean the downfall of Tammany. De Sapio’s domination of the Buffalo convention was the basic reason for the rout. “When the Tammany Hall boss bossed the convention it meant the defeat of the democratic process.”20

  She now joined Lehman, who had been equally incensed by De Sapio’s ham-handedness at Buffalo, and Finletter in setting up the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, dedicated to the reform of the Democratic party, including the unseating of De Sapio. “No campaign in which I have participated,” she said, “has meant more to me than this present struggle to bring real democracy into the party in this state.”

  It took three years and endless campaigning on hot summer nights. “Short speeches, climbing up a ladder onto a sound truck, I often wonder how much sense one really makes,” she asked but stuck to it doggedly. Finally on September 7, 1961, with the assistance of New York’s Mayor Wagner, who also had broken with De Sapio, he was overthrown.

  Was she opposed to De Sapio personally, she had been asked. No, she was opposed “to the kind of boss rule he represents” was her reply.21

  On New Year’s Eve, 1961, friends and family were gathered at Hyde Park. Mrs. Roosevelt was in gay spirits. Someone remarked he had heard De Sapio might be made ambassador to Tanganyika. Why not Somaliland? another voice was heard to say, where his knowledge of Italian would come in handy.

  “But he doesn’t know Italian,” protested Mrs. Roosevelt from the head of the table. She had campaigned in Italian over station WOV, but he was unable to, she remarked. She had been told, she went on, that Mr. De Sapio was very bitter toward her. She could not understand why, she said, putting on her most grandmotherly look. Justin Feldman, who had been Franklin’s administrative assistant, broke in to remark that all of them had dispersed after the 1954 defeat to attend to their private affairs, “But not Mrs. Roosevelt. She evened the score with Carmine for having knifed Franklin.”

  Louis Howe, she commented, had always said that in politics you never forget a double cross. She hadn’t done anything. Governor Lehman had done all the work. She had just awaited her opportunity.22

  14. A NEW GENERATION TAKES OVER

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1959 MRS. ROOSEVELT RECEIVED A GAY card from Adlai Stevenson postmarked Corsica. He was cruising in the Mediterranean with Adlai Jr., his wife, Bill Benton and his family, and some friends, “and all we’ve missed is you!” It was exciting to get a postcard from him, she replied:

  I don’t think I would be the perfect addition because I have never had Franklin’s success in really enjoying the ocean even when it is fairly calm. I would have loved to have been with all of you, however, and I hope that the rest of the summer will be as pleasant as these past weeks.

  Her letter went on to give news of other Stevenson friends. She had seen Mary Lasker, “and poor Anna Rosenberg has had to go into the hospital.” The Stevenson “loyalists” were keeping in touch with each other.1

  After the 1956 defeat she assumed that Stevenson would not run again but felt that the forward-looking elements in the Democratic party should continue to look to him for leadership while younger men in the party were encouraged to come forward to establish their claim to the 1960 nomination. Asked in 1957 who would make a good candidate in 1960, she named Wayne Morse, G. Mennen Williams, Joseph Clark, Edmund Muskie,* and Chester Bowles.2

  The handling of the nation’s foreign affairs loomed uppermost in her mind, especially after her visit to Russia, as she wrote Bowles:

  I think we are in a real emergency and the Democratic party must have someone who will look at
the world as it is and begin to meet its problems in new ways. The only two people I can really feel happy about negotiating with Khrushchev would be you or Walter Reuther. . . .Our Democratic leadership seems to me impoverished in the Senate and House and even Adlai can do little about it.3

  Paul Butler sent Mrs. Roosevelt a report prepared by the Democrats on the Senate Armed Service Preparedness Subcommittee, headed by Lyndon B. Johnson. It deplored the nation’s lack of military preparedness. “A truly patriotic service,” Butler said of the document. Military preparedness was most important, she agreed, “but I hope he [Johnson] will not forget that military speedup alone will not meet the Soviet challenge.”4 Of all the men in public life, Stevenson best recognized the many-dimensioned complexity of the Soviet challenge, but the practical politicians, she knew, felt strongly that a twice-unsuccessful presidential candidate could not win on a third try. Although Stevenson seemed unavailable, she declined to commit herself to any one candidate. At a dinner in Kansas, in October, 1958, the national committeeman began to boost G. Mennen Williams, the youthful governor of Michigan. He is one of the good younger men, Mrs. Roosevelt said agreeably. That did not quite satisfy the committeeman. Adlai Stevenson just did not get across to people, he pressed on, assuming her loyalties were still hitched to the Stevenson standard. In judging 1960 aspirants she would be insistent on only one commitment, she commented, that whoever the Democratic candidate was, he would pledge to make Stevenson secretary of state.

  Her trip out to Kansas was a reminder to her that she was slowing down. Although she had flown out Saturday afternoon, and back to New York late that night, arriving at dawn in an impressive display of energy and will for a woman of seventy-four, she had only remembered why she had agreed to go when she heard one of her hosts at the dinner say: “We are so happy and honored that you should come to our first FDR dinner.” It was time for her sons’ generation to take over, she felt.5