RN

by Richard Nixon

  Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, whom I had first met in Austria in 1956, was now our ambassador in Moscow. We talked for a long time in the secure room on the second floor of Spaso House, the ambassador’s official residence; in every country our embassy has a room that is constantly guarded and swept for listening devices. Thompson told me that the Soviet leaders were furious about the Captive Nations resolution, and the airport reception was probably only the first sign of their disapproval. He said that they were particularly sensitive to such criticism because their relations with some of the satellite countries were strained.

  Because of the time change I could scarcely sleep that night, and around 5:30 I woke my Secret Service agent, Jack Sherwood, and told him I wanted to go to the famous Danilovsky market, where farmers bring their vegetables and meat. It would be a good way to get a sense of the city and its people before starting my official schedule. Sherwood and I were joined by a Russian security policeman who served as driver and interpreter.

  As I walked through the crowded aisles between the stalls, word of my arrival spread quickly. Soon a crowd had gathered.

  For almost an hour I mingled with the crowd, answering questions, caught up in the friendly and spontaneous exchange. As I was about to leave, several people asked if I had any tickets to the American Exhibition. I said I had none but would be delighted to buy some for my new friends there in the market so they could be my guests. I had Sherwood hand the spokesman for the group a hundred-ruble note, enough for a hundred tickets. The spokesman handed it back, explaining that the problem was not the cost of the tickets but the fact that the government made them available only to selected persons. We all laughed about the problem, and I shook hands and left. The next day the three largest Soviet newspapers, Pravda, Izvestia, and Trud, headlined the incident, accusing me of having tried to “bribe” and “degrade” Soviet citizens by offering them money.

  Later that morning, I went to the Kremlin for my first meeting with Khrushchev. He was standing at the far corner of his large office, examining a small model of the Soviet rocket that had recently been fired into outer space. We shook hands for the photographers. He was shorter than I expected, but otherwise he looked exactly like his photographs—the girth, the brash smile, the prominent mole on his cheek.

  While the reporters and photographers were present Khruchshev chatted amiably about the fine Moscow weather. He praised my London Guildhall speech and said that he too welcomed the kind of peaceful competition I had described in it. Then he waved the photographers out and gestured toward a long conference table with chairs on both sides.

  Abruptly the atmosphere changed, and Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the Captive Nations resolution. He called it a stupid and frightening decision and he asked whether war would be the next step. “Heretofore, the Soviet government thought Congress could never adopt a decision to start a war,” he said. “But now it appears that, although Senator McCarthy is dead, his spirit still lives. For this reason the Soviet Union has to keep its powder dry.”

  I tried to explain how the resolution had come about and suggested we go on to other subjects. But he was not to be deterred. Blustering, he tried to twist it into a justification for Soviet arms. Finally I said, “At the White House we have a procedure for breaking off long discussions that seem to get nowhere. President Eisenhower says, ‘We have beaten this horse to death; let’s change to another.’ Perhaps that is what you and I should do now.”

  Khrushchev’s face remained impassive while the translator interpreted my words. “I agree with the President’s saying that we should not beat one horse too much,” he said, “but I still cannot understand why your Congress would adopt such a resolution on the eve of such an important state visit. It reminds me of a saying among our Russian peasants, that ‘people should not go to the toilet where they eat.’ ” By this time his face was flushed with anger, and he said, “This resolution stinks. It stinks like fresh horse shit, and nothing smells worse than that!”

  Khrushchev watched me closely while the translation was made. I decided to call his bluff, and in his own terms. I remembered from some of the briefing materials that Khrushchev had in his youth worked as a herder of pigs. I also remembered from my childhood that horse manure was commonly used as fertilizer—but that a neighbor had once used a load of pig manure, and the stench was overpowering.

  Looking straight into Khrushchev’s eyes but speaking in a conversational tone, I replied, “I am afraid that the Chairman is mistaken. There is something that smells worse than horse shit—and that is pig shit.”

  For a split second after the translator had finished, Khrushchev’s face hovered on the borderline of rage. Then he suddenly burst into a broad smile. “You are right there,” he said, “so perhaps you are right that we should talk about something else now. However, I must warn you that you will hear about this resolution during your visit here.” On this subject if on few others, Khrushchev kept his word.

  We drove from the Kremlin to take a look at the American Exhibition before it opened officially that evening. One of the first displays we came to was a model television studio, and a young engineer asked if we would like to try out a new color television taping system by recording greetings that could be played back during the Exhibition. Khrushchev seemed suspicious, but when he saw a group of Soviet workmen near the display the actor in him took over. Before I knew what he was doing he had scrambled onto the platform and was talking for the cameras and playing to the gallery.

  “How long has America existed?” he asked me. “Three hundred years?”

  “One hundred and eighty years,” I replied.

  Khrushchev was unfazed. “Well, then, we will say America has been in existence for one hundred and eighty years, and this is the level she has reached,” he said, taking in the whole Exhibition hall with a broad wave of his arm. “We have existed not quite forty-two years, and in another seven years we will be on the same level as America.” The audience was obviously enjoying his boasting, and he continued. “When we catch up with you, in passing you by, we will wave to you,” he said, looking over his shoulder and waving goodbye to an imaginary America.

  Pointing to a burly Russian worker standing in the front of the crowd, he asked, “Does this man look like a slave laborer? With men of such spirit, how can we lose?”

  I pointed to an American worker and said, “With men like that we are strong! But these men, Soviet and American, work together well for peace, even as they have worked together in building this Exhibition. This is the way it should be.” I added, “If this competition in which you plan to outstrip us is to do the best for both of our peoples and for peoples everywhere, there must be a free exchange of ideas. You must not be afraid of ideas. After all, you don’t know everything.”

  Khrushchev, furious, jumped in. “If I don’t know everything, you don’t know anything about communism,” he shouted, “except fear of it!”

  Walking through the Exhibition, we soon arrived at its most controversial attraction. This was a full-size model of a middle-class American home, priced at $14,000 and full of conveniences that dazzled the Russians. The Soviet press called it the “Taj Mahal” and insisted that it did not represent the way that an average American family really lived. I told Khrushchev that this was the kind of home that might be owned by an American steelworker, but either he did not believe me or he was unwilling to admit that it was true. We stopped in the model kitchen, and our exchange there turned into a debate that reverberated around the world.

  Unlike our encounter in the model television studio, our “kitchen debate” was not televised, but it was widely reported—with a dramatic photograph showing me prodding my finger in Khrushchev’s chest for emphasis. He was defensive, declaring that Russian houses, too, would have the modern equipment displayed in the American exhibit; and he was aggressive, arguing that it was better to have just one model of washing machine than many. When I asked if it wasn’t better to be arguing about the rel
ative merits of washing machines than about the relative strengths of rockets, he shouted, “Your generals say we must compete in rockets. Your generals say they are so powerful they can destroy us. We can also show you something so that you will know the Russian spirit. We are strong, we can beat you.”

  I replied, “No one should ever use his strength to put another in the position where he in effect has an ultimatum. For us to argue who is the stronger misses the point. If war comes we both lose.”

  Khrushchev tried to turn the tables, accusing me of issuing an ultimatum. “We, too, are giants,” he declared. “You want to threaten—we will answer threats with threats.”

  I told him we would never engage in threats. “You wanted indirectly to threaten me,” he shouted. “But we have the means to threaten too.”

  Finally he was ready to move to less belligerent ground. He said, “We want peace and friendship with all nations, especially with America.” I responded, “We want peace, too.”

  Standing next to Khrushchev during this heated exchange was one of his chief aides, a young party official named Leonid Brezhnev.

  We returned to the Kremlin, where Pat and Mrs. Khrushchev joined us for a lavish luncheon. We toasted each other with champagne and, following our host’s lead, threw our glasses into the fireplace. Then we were served caviar on silver dishes.

  The following night we gave a dinner for Khrushchev at the American Embassy. Midway through the evening he began describing the beauties of the Russian countryside. Suddenly he said that we should not wait to see them, and he insisted that Pat and I spend the night in his dacha outside Moscow: he would join us there the next day for the scheduled meetings. Half an hour later we were in a limousine speeding down deserted roads. Soon we were in the forest, where the air was cooler and the darkness seemed deep and still. Khrushchev’s dacha, which had been a Czarist summer home, was almost as large as the White House. It was surrounded by acres of grounds and gardens, and on one side the forest dropped down to the banks of the Moskva River.

  Khrushchev and his wife arrived late the next morning. With the gusto of a social director he immediately took everything in hand. “First, let’s have pictures taken in front of the house,” he said, “and then we can take a ride on the Moskva River so that you can see how the slaves live.”

  “Oh, yes, the captives,” I said, determined not to let him provoke me on that again.

  Boats were waiting at the dock, and we followed the winding Moskva upriver for almost an hour. Several times groups of bathers swam out from the shore and surrounded the boat, cheering Khrushchev and clamoring to shake our hands. The first time this happened I was amused by Khrushchev’s asking the swimmers, “Do you feel like captive people?” But I soon realized it was a setup. “You never miss a chance to make propaganda, do you?” I asked him. “No, no,” he insisted, “I don’t make propaganda. I tell the truth.”

  We had lunch on the lawn under a canopy of magnificent birch trees; the scene could have been out of Chekhov. When we sat down, Khrushchev made some playful verbal jabs. When Anastas Mikoyan started to speak in English to Pat, Khrushchev accused him of trying to be a Romeo when he was too old for the part. Then he told him, “Now look here, you crafty Armenian, Mrs. Nixon belongs to me. You stay on your side of the table.” With his finger he drew an imaginary line down the middle of the starched white tablecloth between Pat and Mikoyan. “This is an iron curtain,” he said. “And don’t you step over it!”

  One of the first courses was a Siberian delicacy, raw whitefish sliced very thin and spiced with salt, pepper, and garlic. Khrushchev took a generous portion and smiled approvingly when he saw me do the same. “It was Stalin’s favorite dish,” he remarked as he took a large mouthful. “He said it put steel in his backbone.”

  When the plates had been cleared, I expected that Khrushchev and I would excuse ourselves and settle down for serious talk. But he made no move to go. Instead, as we all sat there he began boasting about the power and accuracy of Soviet rockets and missiles. He cast a chill over the table by casually admitting that accidents can happen. A couple of months earlier, for example, he had been worried when a Soviet ICBM malfunctioned and overshot its course by 1,250 miles. At first he had been afraid that it might land in Alaska, but fortunately it fell into the ocean.

  I asked him why the Soviets bothered to continue building bombers if they were so far advanced in missile production. Khrushchev answered, “We have almost stopped production of bombers, because missiles are much more accurate and not subject to human failure and human emotions. Humans are frequently incapable of dropping bombs on their assigned targets because of emotional revulsion. That is something you don’t have to worry about in missiles.”

  When I asked him about submarines, Khrushchev said, “We are building as many submarines as we can.” Mikoyan shot him a quick glance and said, “The Chairman means we are building as many submarines as we need for our defense.”

  I asked about the development of solid fuels for powering missiles; Khrushchev replied, “Well, that is a technical subject which I am not capable of discussing.”

  By this time the atmosphere had become fairly tense. Pat smiled at Khrushchev and said, “I’m surprised that there is a subject that you’re not prepared to discuss, Mr. Chairman. I thought that with your one-man government you had to know everything and have everything firmly in your own hands.”

  Mikoyan came suavely to his leader’s rescue. “Even Chairman Khrushchev does not have enough hands for all he has to do, so that is why we are here to help him,” he said.

  Finally I said quietly that it was largely because of belligerent talk from the Soviet leaders that the world was as fearful of war as it was. “I hope you don’t think that you can hold a meeting of Communists from fifty-one countries in Moscow without our knowing what they are up to and what kind of directives they are getting. Just recently in Poland, you openly declared that the Soviet Union supports communist revolutions everywhere.”

  “We are against terror against individuals,” he replied, “but if we go to the support of a communist uprising taking place in another country, that is a different question. If the bourgeoisie doesn’t surrender power peacefully, then it is true that force may be necessary.”

  “In other words, you consider that workers in capitalist states are ‘captives’ whose liberation is justified?” I asked.

  Khrushchev blustered and said that it wasn’t interference if the Soviets were supporting a genuine internal uprising.

  I asked him about the fact that the Soviet newspapers and radio had openly endorsed the terrorism against Pat and me in Venezuela. The Soviet press had expressed complete sympathy with the mob that had tried to kill us there.

  Khrushchev paused for a moment and then leaned across the table toward me. In a low voice, thick with emotion, he said, “We have a saying that ‘you are my guest, but truth is my mother,’ so I will answer your very serious question. You were the target of the righteous indignation of the people there. Their acts were not directed against you personally, but against American policy—against the failure of your American policy.”

  “I accept your right to have your own opinion and to have sympathy for these violent acts,” I said. “But I want to point out that when great military power like that of the Soviet Union is coupled with such revolutionary opinions and sympathies, there is a grave danger of matters getting out of control. This is why such strong men like Eisenhower and you should meet. But such meetings would have to take place on a basis of give and take. You are one of the most effective spokesmen for your own views that I have ever seen, Mr. Chairman. But you have only one theme. You say that the United States is always wrong, and the Soviet Union is never wrong. Peace cannot be made that way.”

  This fired him anew and he began another long harangue which lasted almost an hour. As he finally wound down, I said, “My question is whether there is any room for negotiation in your position. Suppose I were the President of the United
States sitting here across the table from you instead of the Vice President. Is your position so fixed that you would not even listen to the President?”

  Perhaps he was tired by his long monologue. He was obviously not interested in pursuing the question further, because he answered me with a vague reference to Berlin and soon rose to indicate that the luncheon was at an end.

  It had been 3:30 when we sat down; it was almost nine o’clock when we finally rose from the table. Everyone seemed a little dazed. We had been talking for over five hours.

  Khrushchev’s intention had been to bully us—to overwhelm us with Soviet military strength and his willingness to use it. Like most tyrants, he considered the trapped audience and the interminable monologue important weapons in his personal arsenal. But I had deprived him of their use that afternoon. Tommy Thompson confirmed what I had already guessed: the ordinary instincts of most of the Americans who met Khrushchev were to be pleasant and agreeable with him, and he took this courtesy as a sign of weakness. After that long luncheon at the dacha I knew that my intuition had been right. Khrushchev would respect only those who stood up to him, who resisted him, and who believed as strongly in their own cause as he believed in his.

  At the end of my trip I made an unprecedented radio and television address to the Soviet people. Tommy Thompson and Professor William Y. Elliott of Harvard, who had come at my request as a member of my party, helped me prepare my remarks. Thompson suggested that I mention the incident at the market. He said that the Soviet press had made so much of it that it would be on many of my listeners’ minds. In my speech I simply described what had happened, but this was the first time anyone could remember that Pravda had been criticized publicly, and the incident stirred debate among the Russian people long after I was gone.

  Looking to the future, I said that “to me the concept of coexistence is completely inadequate and negative.” I went on to explain: “Coexistence implies that the world must be divided into two hostile camps with a wall of hate and fear between. What we need today is not two worlds but one world where different peoples choose the economic and political systems which they want, but where there is free communication among all the peoples living on this earth.”