Authors: Jim Newton
The vice president arrived in Moscow on July 23. Khrushchev immediately lit into him. The United States at the time was observing Captive Nations Week, and Khrushchev welcomed Nixon to the land of “captive people.” “Would that the Vice President who has just landed come and see these captive people who are present here,” Khrushchev said. Nixon at first tried to be polite: he praised Khrushchev’s eloquence and remarked that he would have made a good lawyer. Khrushchev refused to be pacified. He kept up his harangue about the Captive Nations resolution, while Nixon fenced, first pointing out that it was Congress, not the president, that had passed the resolution and then gamely noting that it expressed “substantial views of the people in our country.” Khrushchev grew more irritable, called Congress “stupid,” cursed, and apologized for his “peasant language.” After two hours, they had had enough and set out for Sokolniki Park, where an exhibition of American life awaited them.
Again, this time with reporters and others present, Khrushchev went first. Complaining about restrictions on the export of U.S. goods to the Soviet Union, he gibed that “you don’t trade the way you used to.” Nixon retorted: “You need to have goods to trade.” And thus it went. Khrushchev bragged and bullied, Nixon deflected and rebutted. As they stood before the display of an American kitchen, featuring an automatic washing machine, Nixon commented that Americans were inventing such devices to make life easier on American women. Khrushchev said he and his colleagues did not appreciate “the capitalistic attitude toward women.” Nixon explained the economics of American living, pointing out that the model house would cost about $14,000, within the reach of a steelworker. “We have steel workers and we have peasants who also can afford to spend $14,000 for a house,” Khrushchev replied. Nixon showed off other appliances; Khrushchev wondered whether America had invented something “that puts food into your mouth and pushes it down.” At times, Nixon seemed to enjoy himself, tossing asides to the English-speaking press, while Khrushchev was defensive and surly, accusing Nixon of threatening him. On only one thing did they conspicuously agree. “I don’t like jazz music,” Nixon said. “I don’t like it either,” Khrushchev replied.
Although the so-called Kitchen Debate became a classic of Cold War theater, Eisenhower did not immediately recognize it as such. When the reports came out, Jim Hagerty briefed Eisenhower. The president declined comment.
Nixon’s visit left the Soviet premier in a surly mood but heightened anticipation for his American summer holiday. No Soviet leader had ever toured the United States, and Khrushchev’s famous belligerence made him an unpredictable guest. In addition, European allies worried about being cut out of a superpower arrangement, while American conservatives imagined appeasement with an immoral foe. Nixon, fresh from his own encounter with Khrushchev and ratcheting up his campaign to succeed Ike in the White House, took the lead in allaying those fears. Some critics, he acknowledged, “suggest that Khrushchev may outwit, outsmart or trap the President and his associates.” Such fears were unfounded, he insisted. Ike was well aware of the evil of Communism and the duplicity of the Soviet leaders; talk was essential, but it did not imply agreement or naïveté. “Those who believe that this conference is going to result in appeasement, surrender, defensiveness and softness toward communism,” Nixon added, “simply do not know the President of the United States.”
Some approved. Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Adlai Stevenson, among others, took out full-page ads complimenting Eisenhower on the invitation. Others were unconvinced. One member of Congress posted a sign on his door reading, “Khrushchev not welcome here.” In New York, Cardinal Spellman initially refrained from discussing the invitation but then appeared in the pulpit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and warned against “complacently weakening our defenses, permitting the enemy’s promises of peaceful negotiations to blind us to the long and well known fact that the Communist program is in the conquest of the whole free world.”
When Khrushchev’s entourage was announced—it included a hundred people, among them his family, his foreign minister, and various staff—the
Los Angeles Times
led its story with the wry comment that “a small Russian army” was set to “invade the United States.”
Eisenhower prepared for the Soviets by touring Europe on a mission of reassurance, conferring at each stop with allies in order to assure them he would not cut a deal without them. He departed on August 26—just five days after unfurling his nation’s fifty-star flag. He stopped first in Bonn, and as he made his way through the European capitals, his reception supplied ample proof that he retained a special place in the hearts of those whose armies he once commanded—and even those whom he defeated. In Germany, eager, anxious crowds waved banners and beseeched the president for protection, the latest Berlin crisis still fresh in the national consciousness; in London, the throngs were happy and spontaneous; in France, they lined the route of his motorcade beneath paper streamers imprinted with the American flag. Adenauer and de Gaulle, two of the continent’s most austere political figures, beamed in Eisenhower’s presence; Macmillan received Ike as an old friend. Even the traveling press corps was impressed. “We are all completely flabbergasted at the hold he has on people,” one reporter reflected. “The man has it.”
Ike wrapped up his European meetings on September 4. Work complete, he bedded down at Culzean Castle, which reserved for him a suite of rooms for life, and called for the Gang. Bill Robinson rounded up Pete Jones, finding him at 2:00 a.m. in Lake Placid, New York. They rushed to Europe to entertain their friend and commander in chief, meeting him at the Turnberry golf course on a gorgeous Scottish day, joined by the American ambassador, Ike’s wartime friend James Gault, his son John, and a few others, including two pros from the club. Ike shot an embarrassing 89—embarrassing, especially, because the press learned of it—then retreated to the castle for the evening.
Upon returning to the United States, Ike completed final preparations for Khrushchev’s arrival. The president waited in person at Andrews Air Force Base for the premier to land. He was an hour late. Khrushchev bounded out of his Soviet-made Tu-114, a mammoth turboprop aircraft designed by captured German scientists at the end of World War II and freshly minted for the trip. Ike greeted him with a handshake and said: “Welcome to the United States, Mr. Khrushchev.” Strangely, Khrushchev, who had met Eisenhower in Geneva, responded by saying he was “very pleased to meet you.” Eisenhower urged Khrushchev to enjoy the American people and appreciate their commitment to peace, their disinterest in world domination. “I assure you that they have no ill will toward any other people, that they covet no territory, no additional power. Nor do they seek to interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation,” the president said. “I most sincerely hope that as you come to see and believe these truths about our people there will develop an improved basis on which we can together consider the problems that divide us.”
In his remarks, Khrushchev was gracious and impish, boastful and solicitous. “We have come to you,” he said, “with an open heart and good intentions. The Soviet people want to live in peace and friendship with the American people.” Having said that, he crowed of the Soviets’ recent launch of a nuclear-powered icebreaker, and he reminded the president that the Soviets had succeeded in shooting a national emblem to the moon. Even then, he remembered to mollify his host. “We do not doubt that the splendid scientists, engineers and workers of the United States who are working to conquer outer space will likewise deliver their emblem to the moon,” he said. “The Soviet emblem, as an old resident of the moon, will welcome your emblem, and they will live in peace and friendship.”
So it would go over the next twelve days. A large crowd lined Khrushchev’s route from the airport into Washington but watched quietly until Eisenhower dropped Khrushchev at Blair House. Once the president had shed his guest, those outside roared their approval for Eisenhower. That afternoon, the two leaders met at the White House for a brief talk, mostly about arrangements for the trip. After giving Eisenhower a model of the Soviet moon-shot projectile (Ike was “annoyed” but gritted his teeth and accepted the gift graciously), Khrushchev stressed that the world expected progress from the visit and agreed with the president that they should find time to discuss Berlin, Laos, and other points of contention.
After a night in Washington, Khrushchev hit the road. He was accompanied by Henry Cabot Lodge, whom Ike gave the unpleasant duty of escorting the Soviet leader around the country; Lodge performed admirably under trying circumstances, including Khrushchev’s persistent needling. They debated the merits of a free press, the relationship between the states and the federal government, the importance of elections. (“You say you don’t like violence,” Khrushchev teased Lodge at one point, nudging him in the ribs for emphasis. “Did George Washington have an election in order to win the American Revolution?”) Khrushchev met with industrialists in New York and delivered a startling, if transparently hyperbolic, speech to the United Nations in which he called for universal disarmament of conventional as well as nuclear weapons. He chided labor leaders in San Francisco; visited an IBM plant in San Jose; met with farmers and civic leaders in Des Moines; visited steelworkers and machinists in Pittsburgh. He sparred with reporters throughout. He could be eloquent—“May the two words, peace and friendship, be inscribed on the banners of each of our nations and may they guide the conscience and actions of our governments,” he declared in Des Moines—and arrogant: “The fact that you ask such questions and the fact that some gentlemen are laughing before hearing my reply show how little they know of the substance of the matter,” he told a magazine editor in New York.
The theatrical low point of the tour came in Los Angeles, where Khrushchev locked horns with one of American politics’ lesser lights. At a dinner honoring the Soviet leader, he was introduced by Mayor Norris Poulson, who used his moment in the international spotlight to remind the Russian of his infamous pledge, made in the immediate aftermath of Suez and Hungary: “We will bury you.” Not so fast, Poulson now countered. “We do not agree with your widely quoted phrase, ‘We will bury you.’ You shall not bury us, and we shall not bury you,” the mayor lectured. “We are happy with our way of life. We recognize its shortcomings and are always trying to improve it, but if challenged, we shall fight to the death to preserve it.”
It had been a long day. Khrushchev began the morning in New York and then flew to Los Angeles, arriving on a sweltering afternoon. He’d been condescended to at Hollywood’s Fox Studios, where the mogul Spyros Skouras wagged a finger in defense of capitalism and recounted his own ascent from a poor childhood to his position of fame and wealth. (Presumably, Khrushchev was less bored by the Hollywood stars who gathered for his visit, notably Marilyn Monroe, who put on the “tightest, sexiest” dress in her wardrobe and attended without her husband, Arthur Miller. She later told her maid, “Khrushchev liked me.” No wonder.) To cap off his long day, Khrushchev was denied his chance to visit Disneyland because police worried about security; instead, he was given a long, aimless car tour. Even the deputy mayor who greeted Khrushchev at the airport irritated him; the deputy’s background led Khrushchev to conclude that his father had been a wealthy Jewish merchant, one of those “the Red Army had failed to take care of during the Revolution.”
To make matters worse, dinner that night ran late and included an openly skeptical crowd, a “furred and bejeweled audience of capitalists,” as the
Los Angeles Times
put it. Khrushchev nevertheless delivered his pleasant prepared remarks, lauding the “Golden State” and drawing similarities between its development and that of the Soviet Union. When he concluded his speech, however, he could not resist replying to Poulson. “Why do you bring that back?” he asked. “I already have dealt with it during my trip. [Khrushchev had been asked about the remark at his first American press conference and had taken umbrage there as well.] I trust even mayors read the press.” Loosening up, Khrushchev continued to flail Poulson, though with an argument he might well have heeded himself. “We hold positions of too much responsibility to play upon words. The consequences of playing upon words can be too sad for our people.” Then he threatened to take his ball and go home. “It took us only 12 hours to fly here,” he said. “Perhaps it would take less time to get back.”
Still livid, Khrushchev retired to his hotel room, where he hectored Andrei Gromyko and ordered the foreign minister to report his threats to Lodge. Gromyko did, delivering the news to a haggard Lodge after midnight. Lodge fired off a warning to the White House, and Ike’s press secretary the next day rebuked Poulson, without naming him, for trying to score points off the Soviet visit. “Hagerty Asks More Courtesy to Khrushchev,” the headline read. Khrushchev traveled on.
The trip improved after that. Khrushchev enjoyed the train ride up the West Coast and was charmed by San Francisco. As he traveled across country, he seemed to settle in, exhibiting more humor and less vitriol. Crowds were more curious, less hostile.
He returned to Washington on a sultry September afternoon, the air close and still. Khrushchev arrived at the White House late in the day, and Ike quickly spirited him into a helicopter, bound for Camp David—relinquishing his front seat to his guest. Over the next two days, the two leaders and a small handful of top aides ensconced themselves in the Aspen Lodge, a rustic, four-bedroom cottage that housed Eisenhower, Herter, Khrushchev, and Gromyko.
The first night was uneventful. Eisenhower was battling a cold and recognized that his guests were tired, too. So the principals and the rest of their entourages—housed in other cottages throughout the camp—retired at 11:45 p.m. By breakfast the next morning, Khrushchev was regaling Eisenhower with stories of World War II from the Soviet side and salty tales of Stalin’s rule. As the meeting turned to substance, the two men talked past each other and made each other angry. They argued over Berlin. Eisenhower rejected Khrushchev’s demands for progress on that city’s status and explained that he would never agree to a timetable for withdrawal; the American people, Ike stressed, would never accept abandonment of Berlin, and if he agreed to it, he would be forced to resign. Khrushchev complained that the United States was “high-handed” in its dealings with the Soviets. Ike tried to defuse the tension with a visit to the camp’s bowling alley after the morning meeting, but Khrushchev’s anger seemed to mount through lunch. The Soviet leader snapped at Nixon and even at Gromyko. Ike excused himself for a nap but woke to find Khrushchev pacing and nervous. Sensing the need to break the mood, Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to join him on a quick trip to Gettysburg. They jumped in the helicopter at 4:28 p.m., accompanied by a few close aides, including John Eisenhower, and were on the ground in Gettysburg fifteen minutes later.