Word: kosygin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Discussing economics with a visiting Charles de Gaulle in 1944, Joseph Stalin once pointed out a young aide with a crew cut and mournful mien, and said: "I don't know anything. But this man-he is the whole plan." When Aleksei Kosygin became Premier of the U.S.S.R. 20 years later, his rise was seen as the coming to power of a new breed of managerial robot. Last week Stalin's glum young associate turned out to be a lively, even likable robot. In the second week of his official visit to France, Kosygin quipped and capered...
...could not get enough answers when shown the fuselage of the British-French supersonic transport, Concorde, or a frog's heart preserved-alive-in a Grenoble laboratory. Whether reviewing an honor guard of skiing policemen in the Alps or placing a paternal arm around a hesitant American correspondent, Kosygin, 62, was always a relaxed guest. "If we are all together, there will be no more wars," he shouted to a mob of delighted workers at a factory near Lyon. When a Grenoble judge suggested a cultural exchange of jurists, he joshed: "The happiness of the world will be assured...
...proletarian prince was even more amiable when De Gaulle took him and his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, hunting in what was once the preserve of royalty. For the occasion, Kosygin had brought along a turtleneck sweater, a quilted jacket and his own Belgian-made Herstal over-and-under shotgun. Gromyko cut a different figure: gun in hand he tramped through the fields in business suit, grey fedora and dark topcoat. Still, he proved a good shot. In any case, the forests of De Gaulle's Rambouillet chateau are well stocked for just such occasions...
Embarrassing Impulse. To the consternation of French Communists, Kosygin seemed to go out of his way to praise De Gaulle-if only because Soviet policy calls for keeping the doors open to the West at any cost. "The emptiness in Franco-Soviet relations, whatever its origin may have been, is now an appendage of the past," he told De Gaulle. "The evolution of events in Europe has shown the benefits of a Franco-Soviet rapprochement." But Kosygin embarrassed his hosts when, at a purely ceremonial luncheon, he impulsively attacked what he called the resurgence of "the forces of fascism...
This week Kosygin heads south in the company of Premier Georges Pompidou for a tour of the show places of modern French industry, including the Concorde supersonic-transport plant in Toulouse and the nuclear-research center at Grenoble. By coincidence, his trip will take him through precisely those areas of France where De Gaulle is weakest and the left strongest. If Kosygin keeps on singing his praises, that, at least, will please De Gaulle...