Word: khrushchevism
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Still combining pleasantries with threats, Khrushchev turned from local farm conditions to international politics, met for luncheon near the booming Siberian industrial city of Novosibirsk with Finnish President Urho K. Kekkonen, who had traveled 2,380 miles by auto, train and jet to find out whether his country's delicate neutrality was about to be shattered...
Soviet pressure against Finland had mounted steadily since last month, when Moscow demanded joint military talks to meet the alleged threat of West German "aggression." As Tass reported the Siberian table talk, Khrushchev told the Finnish leader that, "before it is too late," the frontier of Finland and the Soviet Union must be fortified against the NATO partners West Germany, Denmark and Norway. "All-round cooperation between our two countries." continued Khrushchev, "requires firm confidence that Finland will abide tomorrow, as it does today, by its chosen foreign policy line"-strict neutrality based on friendship with Russia...
Changing Tunes. The ominous-sounding speech suggested that Russia would demand a degree of political or military surrender from the Finns. But next day Khrushchev relaxed his muscle, granted Kekkonen's request for an indefinite postponement of the joint military consultations. In the meantime, Kekkonen's chief rival for the presidency in next year's elections withdrew from the race, assuring Kekkonen of another six-year term as chief of state. This may have been the Kremlin's goal all along, for in the past Khrushchev has usually found Kekkonen's nimble neutrality satisfactory enough...
Probably the larger purpose of Khrushchev's threat was to intimidate Finland's Scandinavian neighbors, neutral Sweden and NATO allies Denmark and Norway. So far, the threat has failed, as was demonstrated at another luncheon meeting last week by Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvard M. Lange, who traveled to Moscow for talks. In a speech, Lange was publicly berated by Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan for Norway's NATO membership. Angrily, Lange rose to reply, saying in effect that Norway had no intention of withdrawing from NATO: "This is a political reality. The last war taught us that...
...Czechoslovakia, Communist Boss Antonin Novotny followed Khrushchev's destalinization line by reburying a predecessor, ex-President Klement Gottwald, who died in 1953, nine days after Stalin, of natural causes (pneumonia and pleurisy, contracted at Stalin's funeral). From his modernistic mausoleum in suburban Prague's Vitkov Hill, where he lay in public view, Gottwald was moved to a national memorial park and placed underground. Novotny himself used to be a notorious Stalinist, but in an ironic and macabre turnabout managed to blame most of his party's past Stalinist errors on former Party Boss Rudolf Slansky...