124. Memorandum of Conversation0
SUBJECT
- Car Trip to Garst Farm
PARTICIPANTS1
- Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
- Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
- Mr. Sukhodrev
- Mr. Akalovsky
On our way to Mr. Garst’s farm, Mr. Garst took up two political” questions with Mr. Khrushchev. He expressed his hope that the Soviet Union would accept the idea of adequate inspection over disarmament measures and stated that he was sure that the President would insist on such inspection. He said that he thought that disarmament would offer particular advantage to the Soviet Union because, while the armaments burden was depriving the American people of just a few luxuries, it was depriving the Soviet people of many essential commodities.
Mr. Khrushchev said that the Soviet Union was in favor of full and adequate inspection and that such inspection was provided for in the latest Soviet disarmament proposals.
Mr. Garst then said that another problem which he was going to ask Mr. Khrushchev to consider was the so-called cases of compassion, of which there were about two or three hundred. He said that he personally knew of approximately thirty such cases, one of which, for example, was that of a Soviet-born girl who had been deported by the Germans to Germany and had later married an American soldier. At present this girl was living with her husband and children in South Carolina and wanted very much for her elderly parents, who are still in the Soviet Union, to come to this country and join her.
Mr. Khrushchev replied that this woman should write a letter explaining her case and recalling his promise to a Latvian couple he had met this morning at the hotel, said that he was sure that the parents would be granted an exit visa. In general, he said, he had nothing against letting people out of the country because then the capitalists would feed them”, thus relieving the Soviet Union of that burden.
[Page 443]On our way back from Mr. Garst’s farm to the airport, at some point Mr. Khrushchev mentioned that the Soviet Union had developed a turbo-jet aircraft with a maximum speed of 640 kilometers and a payload of 14 metric tons, which was capable of landing on dirt fields and did not require any concrete runways. The plane was now being used for transporting cargo, but if converted for passenger service it could carry approximately 100 persons.
(It was interesting to observe that upon our landing at Des Moines Airport on September 22, and while we were taxiing to the ramp, Mr. Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, took several movie shots of our military jets standing on the field.)