295. Memorandum of Conversation Between Secretary of State Rusk and the Editor of the Saturday Review (Cousins)0
Mr. Norman Cousins came in to give me an interesting account of his visit to Moscow and his discussions with Khrushchev in December 1962.1 The following is the substance of his report:
[Page 630]Mr. Cousins had been invited by the Vatican to undertake a private mission to Moscow in order to put certain questions to Khrushchev on behalf of the Vatican. [Here follow 5-1/2 paragraphs on Cousinsʼ mission for the Vatican.]
Upon arrival in Moscow he saw Khrushchev during a very busy week but was given considerable time (I had the impression of two hours by the Chairman). When Cousins remarked to Khrushchev that he, the Chairman, had had a very busy week the Chairman said that, in political life, such weeks were like a ladyʼs corset—“It was necessary to have them from time to time in order to stay in shape but it felt very good when you could take them off.”
Khrushchev spoke at some length about Russian affairs. He claimed that Soviet industry was showing an encouraging twenty per cent overproduction in terms of the Plan and that he felt that major gains were being achieved. He affirmed that there was a genuine crisis in agriculture and that agricultural norms had been missed by a wide margin and that much remained to be done. He said that they were trying to work out some means by which responsibility could be decentralized to the “action level” and to shake off the paralysis of undue centralization. Khrushchev expected the Communist Party to be the “mind and eyes” of the people and to take the action necessary in local situations to produce results in accordance with the demonstrated desires of the people concerned. Khrushchev said that they were borrowing from capitalism the notion of incentives and that the Soviet Union would be placing more and more emphasis upon personal incentives in order to get on with the job. In discussing de-Stalinization, Khrushchev commented that it was necessary to shift from the highly centralized and ruthless regime of Stalin to a dimension of responsibility to all those who are in a position to take action. Khrushchev said that the difference between Lenin and Stalin was that Lenin forgave his enemies but Stalin killed his own friends.
Cousins, on instruction from the Vatican, made the point to Khrushchev that the Vatican was very upset by the distortion which Soviet propaganda had given to the statements made by the Vatican during the week of the Cuban crisis. If the Soviet Union thought that these statements represented any basic movement away from the West toward the Soviet Union or any revision of the Vaticanʼs attitude toward genuine co-existence this was a great mistake. Khrushchev responded that some of his own journalists “donʼt know how to handle good news”. He said that he has constant difficulty with his own propaganda machine because they respond in a doctrinaire fashion where a more pragmatic attitude would be more productive.
Khrushchev said to Cousins that he knew full well that he would not convert the Pope to Communism and that the Pope would not convert [Page 631] him to Catholicism. But he added, “But stranger things than this have happened.”
[Here follows another paragraph on the Vatican mission.]
Khrushchev then asked Cousins to see Zhukov. Cousins replied that he had seen Zhukov two days before whereupon Khrushchev said he ought to see him again—implying that the Chairman had had some discussion with Zhukov since Cousins last saw him.
Cousins then saw Zhukov who said that “the Chairman has to have some results for his policy” of attempting to find some agreement with the West. Zhukov said that unless the Chairman can show some results there would necessarily be a major change in the Soviet attitude. He said that he was not saying this to Cousins as a threat but simply as a statement of the political facts of life in the Soviet Union. Zhukov thought that there were three fields in which some real progress might be possible: (a) nuclear testing; (b) Berlin; (c) outer space. Zhukov thought that cooperation in outer space was in pretty good shape and was on the tracks. On nuclear testing he insisted that Khrushchev was convinced that his agreement to three on-site inspections and three automatic seismic stations would fully meet the United States requirements. Zhukov referred, for example, to his own conversation with Dr. Weisner2 and claimed that Dr. Wiesner had said that two or three on-site inspections would be all that would be required. Zhukov said that Soviet leaders had been deeply disturbed about President Kennedyʼs rejection of the 3-3 proposal and felt that they had been hoodwinked.
On Berlin, Zhukov said that the only remaining question of any importance was the presence of American forces in West Berlin. He said that it was necessary for us to help Khrushchev to “save face” by accepting aUN flag over Western forces in West Berlin. I questioned Cousins specifically about whether Zhukov had used the phrase “save face” and Cousins insisted that Zhukov had in fact done so.
Cousins concluded the conversation by saying that he would be returning to the Soviet Union and would be in touch with me in the event that I had anything I wished to say before he went.3 I thanked him for his report and told him I would be glad to have a word with him before he returned to the Soviet Union.
- Source: Department of State, S/AL Files: Lot 67 D 2. Secret. Drafted by Rusk.↩
- For another account of the visit, see Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate, pp. 32-57.↩
- Jerome B. Wiesner, Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.↩
- For Cousinsʼ account of his second trip to the Soviet Union in April, see The Improbable Triumvirate, pp. 83-110.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩