Khrushchev at the UN

...Nor will Nasser be called an aggressor should he venture to invade Israel with Soviet might behind him...

...It was smaller than usual, however, for Khrushchev actually wanted "peaceful coexistence" with the United States at that time—not with some imaginary future state, but with the country as it existed then, including its Government and President...

...There are indications of some resistance, especially since the growing anti-Americanism at home, handed down from the Party's top echelon to the common people, must contend with the cross-currents of the present wrangling with Communist China...

...According to the official interpretation, Khrushchev is here to repeat his last year's plan for general and total disarmament to the United Nation's and to urge that the UN take some concrete steps in this direction...

...It can hardly be doubted, however, that it is moving toward a revival of the trends dominant in the Soviet press during the last months of Stalin's life when the United States was clearly Public Enemy Number One...

...There is still talk of the need for "peaceful coexistence...

...It will be proved beyond the shadow of doubt that there is not the least contradiction in these sophistries—nothing but the usual sleight-of-hand of a master "theoretician...

...Pravda has already resurrected Stalin's theory of "just" wars, which asserts that no war waged by the countries of the Soviet bloc is a war of aggression...

...The situation seems quite different in these days of Khrushchev's second visit...

...it is, however, perfectly clear that he is launching an all-out offensive against the West in the UN, setting himself up as the self-appointed leader of the East...

...What results is a highly complicated pattern of criticism and counter-criticism...

...These concepts, however, are now given an essentially different content, and their correctness is argued on a very different basis...

...The position he has ultimately arrived at is not yet quite clear...

...Only the capitalist democracies of the West can properly be called aggressors...

...BORIS I. NICOLAEVSKY is co-author of Karl Marx: Man and Fighter and Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, and is a close student of Soviet affairs...

...Not for a single moment did he lose sight of the "ideological struggle" between the two systems which, as he repeatedly stressed, had been carried on in the past and would go on in the years to come...

...It is perhaps too early to draw conclusions...

...Needless to say, it would be wrong to think that Khrushchev was not carrying a blackjack up his sleeve...

...To be sure, in those days, too, his policy was designed to fit a very definite objective and he acted as a Communist who believed in the "competition of the two systems" and wanted his own system to win...

...As this being written, no one knows what his concrete proposals are going to be, nor is this very important...

...There are signs of a major reorientation on the ideological front, with indications that the ideological leaders themselves are not quite sure about the line they are going to follow...

...Far more important is the pointed inner hostility toward the United States in general—toward the larger aspects of American policies—which has become more and more apparent in Khrushchev's speeches and the entire Soviet press...

...Yet, he fashioned this "ideological struggle" along lines which, while aimed at securing political advantages for his side, would not explode the chances for an agreement on disarmament or rule out the possibility of "peaceful coexistence...

...And so will a Dutchman who cannot see why Dutch New Guinea should be turned over to Indonesians who have never inhabited the country and could not at anv time claim it as their own...

...The idea has won vast approval with the man in the street, who is strictly against war, and whose non-belligerence has been further enhanced by the last few months' developments...

...The term "aggressor," on the other hand, cannot by any means be applied to Red China, which has seized some Indian territories for no better reasons than that, a few centuries back—if we are to take Mao Tsetung's word for it—these lands were part of the Chinese Empire...

...Far more significant is the general atmosphere created by Khrushchev on the occasion of his second visit...

...Conversely, any attempt at the most passive resistance to Red China—in the best Gandhi tradition—is an act of flagrant aggression...

...The fewer the elements of plain rowdyism discernible in each Soviet personal attack upon individual leaders, the more apparent becomes the underlying political orientation directed broadly against the United States...

...Today, the Soviet people are no longer told by Moscow that "peaceful coexistence" is possible because the American Government does not want war...

...It is through such blatant propaganda that the idea that a major war can be averted is being driven home...

...To be sure, the current Soviet trend follows a fairly erratic course...

...It was no accident that just before his departure from Moscow, an All-Union conference was called and spent four days discussing the organization of an ideological propaganda center within the CPSU Central Committee...

...In other words, he vouched for the American Government and its peaceful intentions before the immense Soviet audience, before Communist audiences everywhere in the world...

...The thesis that wars can be avoided is now argued on the basis of technology rather than politics...

...What counts is not Khrushchev's occasional coarse remark or his isolated attacks upon this or that political leader in the United States...

...Any Belgian who thinks it necessary to halt the withdrawal of Belgian paratroopers from the Congo for 48 hours, at least until the evacuation of women and children has been completed, will surely be branded an aggressor...

...What is the basic difference between the Soviet Premier's first and second visits...

...Tomorrow, no doubt, Soviet theoreticians from the Institute of Marxism-Leninism will be arguing that no act of violence, in general, can be condemned as aggression if it serves to bolster the foreign policy line adopted by Khrushchev...

...Even the fact that the American people do not want war is mentioned less frequently and with less emphasis...

...Undoubtedly Khrushchev's foreign policy, as it shaped up at the time of his first visit to the United States, has been largely-abandoned...

...Still, one peculiar feature of the present set-up has now become sufficiently clear...

...It is even less proper to speak of aggression by the Soviet armies after the mass murder of Hungarian workers...

...That wars are no longer "inevitable" is another thought reiterated daily...

...It should be stressed again and again that the shift back to the old Stalin track is still a long way from complete...

...such tirades have become part of the political stock-in-trade...

...In a controversy with the Yugoslav theoretician, Edward Kardelj...

...was what he aimed for, and a secure, long-standing agreement at that...

...Reports in the Soviet press seem more contradictory than ever...

...This change is closely related to the break with his policy on the home front, in 1958-59, involving collective farmers...

...Last year Khrushchev expected to have his disarmament plan carried out fully with the agreement of the majority in the UN—i.e., of the Anglo-Saxon world above all, and especially of the United States...

...Those who follow the Soviet press, especially Khrushchev's speeches, cannot help noticing that since the ill-fated events of this past May it has been increasingly anti-American...

...An agreement with the U.S...

...He wanted that "in earnest, and for keeps...

...The development in this direction is not yet complete—if there is such a thing as a completed evolutionary process...

...Such crudities can be interpreted as mere expressions of irascibility or quick temper...

...It was for this reason that Khrushchev not only offered his assurance to the United States that he had faith in the peaceful intentions of the American people, but also emphasized that he made no distinction between the people and the Government of this country...

...Besides making statements to this effect before American audiences (e.g., to a gathering of industrialists and businessmen arranged by the publisher of the Journal of Commerce), Khrushchev had them publicized on the front page of Pravda, the organ of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party (CPSU) in the September 27, 1959 issue...

...To put it another way, the concept of "peaceful coexistence" as a result of free agreement between equal nations has been shelved in favor of peace by coercion, dictated under the threat of Soviet rocket missiles...

...and revival of Stalinist trends Khrushchev at the UN By Boris I. Nicolaevsky IT IS EXACTLY a year since Nikita Khrushchev's first "visit of friendship" to the United States...

...Recently, too, the violence of these verbal thrusts has been somewhat subdued, compared to the "hysterical" summit press conference in Paris...

...It should be added that the concept of the "aggressor"" is undergoing a similar transformation...

...The Soviet military machine, it is claimed, has been so highly developed that it can crush any "aggressor," should the need arise...

...Nor does Khrushchev seem too clear in his mind as to what is to be done...

...It seems that in the past few weeks (apparently, following the conference at Bucharest, and after the July Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee) we have been witnessing some attempts to reorganize the foreign policy line laid down by the Soviet dictator...

...The global role played by the United States in August-September 1960 is very different from its position of a year ago...