Word: bulganins
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Five days of chilling British indifference had made their smiles sickly and their tempers short. Last week, while Premier Nikolai Bulganin kept up a covering barrage of pleasant generalities, Nikita Khrushchev dropped all pretense of geniality, and got down to business. Comrade Khrushchev's new theme: Russia is a powerful, thriving and scientifically advanced nation, willing and able to trade profitably with the West, but strong enough to do without if necessary...
Menacing Pause. Bulganin tried to retrieve the situation with an urbane, jolly-fellow speech regretting that they had not seen all they wanted because he and Khrushchev were "slaves of protocol." But when Bulganin sat down, Khrushchev lumbered to his feet and, flushed with anger and alcohol, launched into an hour's tirade...
Throughout, Bulganin sat silent. At midnight the dinner broke up, in an atmosphere of sullen ill-feeling. When someone proposed a toast to "our next meeting," Khrushchev gave him a cold stare. Later, he growled: "It is far more difficult to discuss things with you Labor leaders than with the Conservative government of this country...
Second Thoughts. Next day, Khrushchev was still as surly as a Siberian bear. He muttered that if this was British Socialism, he preferred to be a Tory. At a lunch given by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Khrushchev interrupted another of Bulganin's speeches to grunt: "And I hope next time we come, the Labor Party will be more friendly." When Brown came up to offer his hand, Khrushchev curtly said "Nyet," and turned away...
...their farewell press conference in Britain, B. & K. openly ridiculed the disarmament subcommittee. Bulganin hinted that it might better have been called the "subcommittee on concealing the arms race." When someone asked whether the Soviet Union would allow inspection teams to check Russian nuclear-weapon stocks, Khrushchev said jauntily: "Our comrade Gromyko has gone grey answering questions like that." Since there is not a grey hair in Gromyko's head, this got a laugh. Khrushchev then said: "It is my prophecy he will become grey by the time they agree...