Conqueror on Tour

What Nikita Khrushchev so proudly calls "the Socialist Camp" is an armed camp, and not since the Hungarian revolt itself has the naked face of tyranny been so apparent as since the recent execution of Imre Nagy. Last week the U.S. reported to the U.N. that at least 100 imprisoned Nagy supporters are now facing trial in Hungary, and Belgrade reported that six more Hungarians had been executed. At this particular moment, the big boss of this armed camp descended on East Germany, the most heavily occupied (33 divisions) ramparts of his empire, breathing defiance and confidence.

Popping from the train in East Berlin like a plump orange from a vending machine, Khrushchev reviewed a goose-stepping Wehrmacht-uniformed honor guard. At his side appeared dour Defense Minister Marshal Malinovsky, whose attendance had not been announced in advance but who explained that he was "spending a leave" in East Germany.

Listen, the Wind. Simply by appearing in person at the East German Party Congress, Khrushchev demonstrated his support for East Germany's Stalinist chief, goateed Walter Ulbricht. "The wind isn't blowing into your face but Adenauer's." he told party activists. "Don't worry, they'll come yet and knock on your door and say, we're from Bonn and would like to negotiate." He drove into the countryside and hopped out to tell sugar-beet growers how to plant their crops ("in clusters of four"). The crowds in the market squares gave him a desultory welcome. But among some 2,500 Party Congress delegates in East Berlin he got duly booming cheers, and he chose to compare these with the reception "Nixon recently experienced in Latin America." For two hours Khrushchev spoke to his German minions, in the conqueror's native Russian tongue, leaving his remarks to be translated. More than half of his speech was devoted to a heavy attack on Tito, though he insisted plaintively at one point, "We do not pay the Yugoslavs more attention than they are worth. The more attention we pay, the more they believe they really have the strength to play a role, the more their prices go up."

Lid to Jar. "We admitted our mistakes," roared Nikita (Hungarian Party Boss Janos Kadar, who served in Nagy's Cabinet and later assured his people that Nagy would not be punished, listened stolidly from his seat among the foreign delegates). "The Yugoslav leaders didn't. They have too little courage to tell their people they are responsible for this conflict. They say we falsify Marxism-Leninism. Then why has the U.S.S.R. had such great successes? Comrades, the lid does not fit the jar, as the saying goes. What success can the Yugoslav leaders, who call themselves Marxists, show?"

Promising to press his campaign against Yugoslav heresy to a victorious end, Khrushchev congratulated the East German party on its "pitiless struggle for purity against revisionism and opportunism," and won his loudest cheer of the day with a final promise: starting Jan. 1, 1959, East Germany will no longer have to pay $144 million annual support contributions to the Soviet forces.

In elections last week in North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany's most populous state, 82-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's Christian Democrats found the winds anything but contrary. The opposition Socialists, thinking that their surest bet was to campaign against "Atomic Death," in opposition to the Chancellor's policy of atomic rearmament inside NATO, were swept from office. The Christian Democrats won an absolute majority, the first time in North Rhine-Westphalia history.

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