Word: nikita
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There were moments last week when the Kremlin seemed to have less trouble coexisting with the U.S. than with the Communist bloc (or blocs). While the world was positively smothered in peace talk from Moscow about how Nikita Khrushchev's wisdom had prevented a war between the U.S. and Russia, there were audible rumblings of dissension in the Communist realm...
...thing, Nikita would scarcely want to mar so quickly the image that he is building as "peacemaker" in Cuba. Moreover, Cuba must have convinced him, if he still needed convincing, that the U.S. will stand firm in Berlin. Since Khrushchev presumably is no more eager to start a nuclear war over Berlin than over Cuba, provoking a Berlin crisis now might be risking another and even more disastrous Russian backdown. The guess is that Khrushchev will simply not revive the East German question for several months...
...history is any guide, the dreamers are in for sharp disappointment. Nikita Khrushchev is as flexible a maneuverer as any Communist who has studied Lenin's line: "If you are not able to adapt yourself, if you are not ready to crawl in the mud on your belly, you are not a revolutionist but a chatterbox." Occasional appearances to the contrary, Khrushchev is no chatterbox. Over Cuba he had to do some crawling, but it will not be easy to keep him down...
Beatnik Boy Scouts. Though Russell at 90 commands the special brand of affectionate awe that the English reserve for all eccentric aristocrats and antic nonagenarians, his neutral-to-Nikita stand revealed to many what Economist Maynard Keynes once called "Bertie's ludicrously incompatible views" of man's fate. Unilateralism, which has often been defended in Britain as a kind of beatnik Boy Scout movement that helps channel youthful idealism, has also been badly tarnished in recent weeks...
Other personality ratings ran somewhat lower. Elizabeth Taylor, David Susskind, and Nikita Khrushchev had McL-Cs of about three minutes each. The late Richard Nixon's rating was maliciously set in the miniscule three second range...