Evening star., 1961-11-29
The President in Izvestio

Although it is not suddenly going
to bring about revolutionary improve
ment in Soviet-American relations,
president Kennedy'S interview with
sAlexei Adzhubei, Izvestia'S editor (who
happens also to be Premier Khrushchev's
I. .son-in-law), is certainly an interesting
and novel event. Indeed, 1t may even be
significant enough to justify the Presi-
dents "hope that 1t will lead to further
intenSification of free communication
between our two countries at all levels"
. OF course, when a Russian leader
Z like Mr.. KhruShchev delivers a speech,
meets the press or makes some cocktail
party comment on any more or less
consequential subject, our American
newspapers, along with our radio and
telexiSion networks, publicize his re-
marks from coast to coast, often in full
text and under big headlines. BY way
OF contrast, however, our own country's
leaders, from the President on down,
have not been granted even a Smidgen
Of comparable publicity in the USSR
Instead, ever since its founding, the
Soviet dictatorship, with only occasional
lapSes Of liberality, has used censorship
of every type, including electronic
jamming, to keep the Russian people
in the dark as to the views of the United
States and the free world at large. And
at the same time, with a kind of psy-
chotic intensity, it has spared no effort
to persuade the masses of the USSR
that we and our allies are capitalistic
villains bent upon destroying all that
is good and beautiful in the world of
Marxism-Leninism.
1t is against this background that
one must measure the fact that Izvestia,
the Soviet governments official news
paper as distinct from Pravda, which
is the organ of Russia's Communist
Party, has published the full text of
Mr.. Adzhubei's interview with the Presi-
dent. Actually, in terms of American
reporting, "interview" is not quite the
right word to be used here because of
the interviewer's resort to declamatory
statements and propagandistic debating
points rather than simple, objective
questions. Nevertheless it is noteworthy
that the Presidents replies-admirably
effective and precise on every matter
OF consequence, including Berlin and the
threat of Kremlin-led Communist in
filtration, Subversion and aggression
have been printed without abridgment
and distributed to Izvestia'S millions of
readers. Clearly, if the USSR's other
newspapers carry the story throughout
the country, and If the Kremlin'S radio
and TV facilities publicize it, Mr.. Khru-
shchev'S government will have a right
to claim that it is moving, no matter
how slowly, toward ending the censor
ship blackout that has heretofore denied
to the Russian masses a true picture
of the Western world and Americas
views on the great and terrible issues of
our time.
The President has done an excep-
tionally fine job, it seems to us, in
expressing some of the most important
of those views to Mr.. Adzhubei, and it
is encouraging that the fun text of them
has been printed in Izvestia without
editing or interlinear booS However,
although this adds up to a good sign,
we must still face the reality-as demon
strated by the Soviet attitude at the
resumed Geneva talks on nuclear testing
and by our sharp attack on Soviet
"colonialism" behind the Iron Curtain
that relations between Washington and
Moscow continue to be bad After all,
one swallow does not make a summer;
it will take much more than a single
interview of this sort to bring about a
real thaW in the cold war