Today the World

...Even the first Soviet atomic bomb was achieved and the hydrogen bomb begun under his aegis...

...Khrushchev's foreign policy has expanded the USSR's role from a regional to an international scale Today the World By Richard Lowenthal ONE OF THE main difficulties to a proper understanding of the Soviet role in world affairs is that we tend to overlook the major long-term changes in that role because of our often excessive preoccupation with the short-term zigzags of Soviet foreign policy...

...To achieve this, he does not rely on local Communist propaganda alone, but feels strong enough to use the Soviet state...

...in developing an effective world policy...

...Communist propaganda, of course, was world-wide and a useful auxiliary to Soviet power, but Stalin confined it strictly to that auxiliary role, and refused ever to commit the resources of the Soviet Government to the defense of Communist principles outside its range of geographic effectiveness...

...in a two-power world—of the two military blocs and their nuclear stalemate, of the rivalry of the two economic systems, and the ideological struggle— that we tend to overlook the fact that throughout Stalin's lifetime the Soviet Union was far behind the U.S...

...Only under Khrushchev has the Soviet Union begun deliberately to assert a world-wide role commensurate with its new power...

...Recently one of Khrushchev's closest assistants in the Party leadership, Mikhail Suslov, coined the classical formula for Khrushchev's revival of Leninism...

...That is how Khrushchev sees his own role in history...

...Khrushchev believes in "world revolution" far more than Stalin did, because he sees revolutionary changes in every continent...

...his occupation regime extended Soviet control to the center of Europe...

...His relentless slave-driving created the industrial base: RICHARD LOWENTHAL is the London Observer's expert on Soviet affairs...

...His limitless confidence is due not only to his ebullient temperament, nor to the vast increase in Soviet military strength...

...He recognized the existence of uncommitted neutrals and proceeded to woo them...

...But he also sees the need to develop a world-wide policy in order to make sure that these changes really go in a Communist direction...

...when the dictatorship of the proletariat transforms itself from a national force into an international force, meaning that it is able to exert decisive influence on world politics...

...from isolationism—its awakening to consciousness of its world-wide power and responsibilities, and its gradual assumption of world-wide commitments...

...his leadership survived Hitler's invasion...

...Yet there exists a fundamental difference between the world role of the Soviet Union now and in Stalin's time—one that has persisted through all the recent tactical zigzags...

...control of Latin America by his support for Cuba, and in seeking the friendship of the African nationalists over the Congo crisis...

...He jumped across the established geographic frontiers into the Middle East by his arms deal with Gamal Abdel Nasser—and the Middle East, without becoming a Soviet sphere, ceased to be a Western preserve...

...But while he raised Russia to the strength of a world power, he never attempted to use this power outside the gradually expanding area where Soviet land armies could make their weight felt...

...We have become so used to thinking of the Soviet Union in terms of its rivalry with the U.S...

...The change under Khrushchev is so great that it may be compared with the gradual emergence of the U.S...

...In the effective range of his foreign policy, he was, as has so often been remarked, the true successor of the Tsars—because with him, as with them, that range was determined by the facts of geography, by the needs and limitations of a landlocked power...

...and it becomes apparent as one surveys the Khrushchev era as a whole...

...it is also based on the perception that the world of today is everywhere in a state of revolutionary change...

...He is traveling everywhere and threatening everywhere, and though he has sent no troops to Suez or the Lebanon, to Cuba or to the Congo, his travels and threats are more than mere propaganda—they are acts of the Soviet Government, calculated to force every leader of every country to take Soviet reaction into account on every issue...

...Stalin concentrated on surviving "capitalist encirclement": Khrushchev has endorsed Anastas Mikoyan's dictum that "it is no longer certain who is encircling whom...

...Stalin was the architect of present Soviet power...

...He developed foreign aid on the American model, but with Communist modifications, as a world-wide weapon of policy...

...Stalin's symbol was the heavy artillery: Khrushchev's symbol is the rocket "which can reach every point on the globe...

...He said the time had now come, which Lenin foresaw...

...Khrushchev, on the other hand, inherited the power and almost at once he broke with this "isolationist" tradition, developing new ambitions and accepting new commitments as a means of achieving them...

...He is repeating the same procedure in breaking U.S...