Khrushchev

[wanswheel]

PBS American Experience program "Cold War Roadshow" will include a scene of Khrushchev's trip to San Luis Obispo on the Southern Pacific.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDa_wi3rZsw

 

[wanswheel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0vcGa_TMYc

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll54/id/795

[tree68]

Interesting.  Assuming they went up the Coast line from LA to SLO, they went right through Vandenberg AFB, a major test site for missiles (or was).  I wonder if Nikita knew that...

[wanswheel]

Excerpt from Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev

http://kiatipis.org/Books_Hosted_gr/Nikita.Khrushchev/Memoirs-of-Nikita-Khrushchev%5BVol3%5D.pdf

Now a few words about the train. American railroad cars have good springs that give a soft ride. They are very comfortable and it’s a pleasure to travel in them. In general, the entire railroad system seems to be on a high level…

According to the schedule, the train stopped at a particular station [San Luis Obispo]. A lot of people had gathered there, apparently from nearby towns. I don’t know who these people were. When the train stopped everyone was staring at the railroad cars. They were obviously trying to get a look at the Soviet delegation. Apparently an announcement about us had been made earlier.

 

I suggested to Lodge: “Let’s go out on the platform.”

“What are you saying? I wouldn’t advise it.”

But in my view, since the people had come there, we should go out to meet them; otherwise it might be misunderstood, as though we were ignoring them, displaying lack of respect for those who had wanted to meet us or at least to see us. On the other hand, people might think that I was afraid, too much of a coward to come out. So I went to the exit, jumped down on the platform, and went over to the gate between the station and the lawn on which the people were standing. The people crowded around Lodge and me and pressed us against the gate. People were shoving against one another pushing their neighbors out of the way. But this situation lasted for only a short time because the whistle blew for the train’s departure. We returned to our railroad car, but I spoke to people out the window and answered questions.

Not everyone could hear my voice and suddenly from somewhere, a bullhorn appeared. Lodge held it in front of me while I spoke. I then finished a brief speech of thanks. After I had gone back in the railroad car, Lodge stayed outside for a short time, and when he returned he gave me a medal with a bas relief of Lenin on it, which had been pinned to my suit. I had received it from the Society for Peaceful Coexistence.

I asked him: “Where did you find it?”

“Some man handed it to me and said: ‘Mr. Khrushchev dropped this. Please give it back to him.’”  I was very glad to have it back; a feeling of respect for this unknown person welled up in me. After all, someone else might have just kept what they found as a souvenir or have been tempted to hold on to this treasure, because the medal was made of gold. To a selfish person, even though it wasn’t large, it would have been a temptation.

[54light15]

"The prime minister is a man of the people, but he is also a man, if you get my meaning."

[MidlandMike]

I watched the show, while I was also reading this forum.  My interest turned back to the show when I saw he was riding another train with catenary, apparently the NEC between NY and DC.

[wanswheel]

Top Security for Nikita's Train Ride

NEW YORK, September 17 (UPI) — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's train ride from Washington to New York today will be as suspense-packed as a movie spy thriller. His crack 15-car express train will be preceded by a pilot train carrying Secret Service men, Soviet secret police, and Pennsylvania Railroad detectives. Every inch of the route will be scanned for trouble, with the passengers on the pilot train packing pistols instead of luggage. Right after this train will come the Khrushchev express, made up of two locomotives, empty coach cars, three luxury parlor cars, a diner and a glass-paneled observation car.

Nikita Khrushchev (C) smiles and gestures as he talks to Henry Cabot Lodge (foreground), U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., during the Soviet premier’s train ride from Washington to New York today. Also shown are Soviet Ambassador Mikhail A. Menshikev (R), U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Llewellyn Thompsen (center foreground) and State Department interpreter Alexander A. Kelevsky (lower right), who translates Khrushchev’s words as the train passed through Philadelphia.

[wanswheel]

Excerpt from Khrushchev The Man and His Era by William Taubman

http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/168865-1/William+Taubman.aspx

Of all the construction projects Khrushchev superintended, the biggest and most important was the Moscow Metro, a classic Stalinist project built in a quintessentially Stalinist way. What’s more, having met and mastered this impossible challenge and having been lavishly rewarded for doing so, Khrushchev was forever wedded to the techniques that worked miracles on the Metro but proved less successful later on.

The Metro was to be the best and most expensive on earth—not because the people of Moscow really needed it (if their welfare had been the aim, surface transport would have been more cost-efficient, leaving funds for underdeveloped housing and services) but because it served larger state purposes. In wartime, its unprecedentedly deep tunnels and stations could double as bomb shelters. In the meantime it would show the world that socialism really was the wave of the future. For that demonstration no price tag was too high; not the 350 million rubles spent in 1934 alone (compared with 300 million per year devoted to consumer goods nationwide during the first five-year plan); nor the endless tons of marble, bronze, and other expensive materials (some of it surely confiscated from churches) poured into stations decorated with sculptures, stained glass, and mosaics.

Although the work had started in 1931, Metro construction began in earnest after Khrushchev took the reins in Moscow, with the first subway line slated to enter operation on November 7, 1934, the anniversary of the revolution. Khrushchev’s experience in the Yuzovka mines helped him see the wisdom of closed-tunnel, as opposed to open-trench, construction. But “when we started building,” he later said, “we had only the vaguest idea of what the job would entail. We were very unsophisticated. We thought of a subway as something almost supernatural. I think it’s probably easier to contemplate space flights today than it was for us to contemplate the construction of the Moscow Metro in the early 1930’s.”

Despite his ignorance (or perhaps because of it), Khrushchev took mind-numbing risks to get the job done. He and Moscow Mayor Nikolai Bulganin drove the more than seventy thousand workers mercilessly, demanding that they work forty-eight hours without respite and ignoring engineers’ warnings that tunnels or the buildings above them would collapse. Terrible accidents occurred, including underground fires and floods, only to be portrayed in fevered accounts of the project as instances of heroism in service to the great cause.

Khrushchev drove himself as hard as his crews. “Even though I kept my formal job at the City Committee,” he recalled, “I gave eighty percent of my time to the Metro. I went to and from the Moscow Committee through the shafts. In the morning I climbed down a shaft near where I lived and came up out of a shaft near the Party office building. It would be hard for me to describe how strenuous a working day we put in. We slept as little as possible so that we could give all our time to the cause.

The Metro didn’t make the November 1934 deadline. But on May 1, 1935, when the first trains rumbled from Sokolniki to Park Kultury and from Komintern Street (later Kalininskaya) to Kiev Station, Khrushchev was aboard, sharing the glory with Kagonovitch, after whom the Metro was named. Wrote a Metro engineer: “In the life of a man there are especially memorable days. On days like this, he suddenly begins to understand in a new way all the simple things which he thought he knew all about long ago. On days like this he becomes inspired with love for things and phenomena which he had taken for granted. Just such a day was the day when Comrade Khrushchev talked to me.”

[DSchmitt]

On train through Vandenberg AFB

Found here:    http://adst.org/2013/10/khrushchev-visits-america-a-cold-war-comedy-of-errors-act-ii/

 

"Well, we went up to San Francisco on the train the next day. The reason for going on the train was that he was supposed to see Vandenberg Air Force Base, where they had an early generation of missiles — were they the Jupiters? — and they were visible from the train window. So the idea was — and it’s rather simplistic — the idea was, we’ll go by there, and these missiles will be up…they’d be up and he’d see them, and he’d say, “Oh, gracious, these people are powerful, I’d better watch it.” As a matter of fact we were much more [powerful]. They were way, way behind, they didn’t have anything like that.

Well, as a matter of fact when we went by Vandenberg Air Force Base, Khrushchev made it a point to be giving an interview to a number of correspondents sitting with his back to the window through which one could see Vandenberg Air Force Base, and he never looked out the window. In fact one of the correspondents said, “Oh, Mr. Prime Minister, we are passing Vandenberg Air Force Base.” And Khrushchev said, “Yes? So?” You know, that kind of thing. He made it a point not to look at the missiles. I mean it was pretty obvious to him what this was all about."

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

wanswheel

[Snipped and emphasis added - PDN]

Excerpt from Khrushchev The Man and His Era by William Taubman

http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/168865-1/William+Taubman.aspx 

. . . We thought of a subway as something almost supernatural. I think it’s probably easier to contemplate space flights today than it was for us to contemplate the construction of the Moscow Metro in the early 1930’s.” . . .

  Heck, the same could be said even today about some US cities . . .  

Thanks again, Mike, for digging this up and sharing it.    It provides some interesting insights into that culture, and its priorities and efforts - note that all this was in the midst of the Great Depression, and before World War II. 

- Paul North.  

[54light15]

I wonder if on this trip he landed at Idlewild airport. Where exactly was Car 54? What were Tutie and Muldoon doing? Could have been a conspiracy!

[wanswheel]

Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild to take off, but not to land there.  His plane, Tupolev-114, landed without him (from Andrews A.F.B.), while he rode the Pennsy.  In 1960, he sailed over on the Baltika, flew home.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/worlds-biggest-airliner/query/114

 

[wanswheel]

Correction: Khrushchev’s TU-114 evidently remained at Andrews for the duration of his 1959 visit. Instead, the Air Force provided transportation NY-LA, SF-Des Moines, DM-Pittsburgh, and return to Andrews.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/09/khrushchev-arrives-in-la.html

[wanswheel]

Khrushchev boarding PRR train (52 seconds)

http://dbsmaint.galib.uga.edu/cgi/news?query=id:wsbn32615

Khrushchev talking to reporter aboard SP train (first 3 minutes)

http://dbsmaint.galib.uga.edu/cgi/news?query=id:wsbn40957