Word: nikita
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What the foreign ministers had agreed on, with this display of cheerful unity, was a united Western stance for the Big Four summit conference scheduled to begin in Paris on May 16, with President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Charles de Gaulle facing Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Other way stations still lay ahead-De Gaulle's eight-day visit to the U.S., beginning this week, and another foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul on May 1-but essentially, the position that the West would take to the summit had been settled...
Truth was that, apart from the organized knots of Reds, the crowds that turned out to see Khrushchev were mostly just curious-ancl often silent. And throughout the tour, Nikita was confronted by the weighty displeasure of France's Catholic hierarchy. Priests were forbidden to receive him in their churches. In Reims the Host was removed from the altar of the cathedral before Khrushchev was shown through-and a purification service was held after he had left. The church even succeeded in spiking one of the anticipated triumphs of the Agitprop men-Nikita's scheduled meeting with Canon...
Fortnight ago, after his bishop sternly forbade him to receive Nikita, Canon Kir reluctantly agreed to obey. But neither church nor state had any real confidence that the canon could resist if Nikita came to call. Accordingly, on the morning of the day Khrushchev was due to arrive in Dijon, two police cars pulled up in front of Canon Kir's house and hustled the furiously gesticulating priest off for a long drive in the country...
...reporters: "I agree with Christ in most of his teachings. Besides, they fit Communism. There is only one point where I do not agree: when Christ says one has to turn the other cheek. For me, if a man strikes me on the cheek, I knock his head off." Nikita's preference for knocking heads became clear after a visit to Douaumont, where thousands of the French and German soldiers who fell at Verdun in World War I are buried. As French Minister of State Louis Jacquinot launched into a polite speech recalling the sacrifices France has made...
...week's end, Nikita took off for Moscow. He had tried to stir up trouble between France and its allies-and had failed. He had repeatedly revealed that behind his folksy mask lay an arrogant brutality. But it must be counted a plus for Moscow that Nikita's uninhibited peasant vitality somehow seemed to reduce "the Soviet menace" to human dimensions. Reflecting on his performance, many Frenchmen, rightly or wrongly, were now inclined to accept one of Khrushchev's own favorite sayings about himself and Russia's Communists: "A little courage-we do not have horns...