REVALUING KHRUSHCHEV

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30575, 19 October 1964, Page 13

REVALUING KHRUSHCHEV

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, October 18. More details about Mr Khrushchev’s removal from power are likely to be disclosed in a major Kremlin statement on Monday.

Russia’s leaders are expected to use a Moscow parade for the three new cosmonauts to explain their stand on foreign and domestic questions.

This is thought likely to be set out in a Red square speech by Mr Leonid Brezhnev, who succeeded Mr Khrushchev as party leader, or by Mr Alexei Kosygin, the new Prime Minister.

But “Pravda” today hinted that Mr Khrushchev had been replaced because of “harebrained scheming,” hasty decisions and “armchair methods.”

Collections of his speeches and other books with his statements have disappeared from Moscow shops. His name did not appear in a “Pravda” article today on the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of the Ukraine. Until a few days ago he was prominently identified in newspaper articles as one of the main organisers on the Ukrainian war front.

There was no way of checking a. West German newspaper report that the 70-year-old former Premier was under house arrest. His whereabouts were not known, but a Russian spokesman last night said he was in Moscow and “relaxing.” At Airport

President Mikoyan was at Moscow airport with Mr Kosygin this morning to see off President Dorticos, of Cuba, but later flew to Kiev for celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of the Ukraine’s liberation.

“Izvestia” reported that Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Soviet Defence Minister, was also in Kiev for the celebrations, leading a delegation of the Soviet armed forces.

Diplomats reported that Mr Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, was absent from the airport when President Dorticos left for home after a three-day visit. The Foreign Ministry was represented by his first deputy, Mr Vasily Kuznetsov. Another absentee was Mr Brezhnev, who has made no

announced public appearances since he was named the party leader.

The airport was decorated with portraits of both Mr Brezhnev and Mr Mikoyan, but there were no pictures of Mr Kosygin. Mr Khrushchev is expected to go into quiet retirement—benefiting from reforms he himself introduced after Stalin’s death.

Leading figures dismissed during Mr Khruschchev’s years of power were sent to distant posts or compulsorily retired but some of them have even reappeared at official receptions. Under Stalin they would almost certainly have been imprisoned or shot. One aftermath of his removal will be the gigantic task of rewriting history books which praise his role in Soviet history.

The best known group of

prominent figures ousted by Mr Khrushchev was the socalled “anti-party group” whose removal in 1957 finally consolidated his position in power.

The three leading figures involved were Mr Vyacheslav Molotov, the former Foreign Minister and one of Stalin’s closest confidants, Mr Georgi Malenkov, who succeeded the dictator as Prime Minister, and Mr Lazar Kaganovitch, at one time one of Stalin’s chief lieutenants and later a first deputy premier. After his fall, Mr Molotov was appointed Ambassador to Mongolia, and from 1960 to 1962 he was chief Soviet delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Since then he has lived in retirement and is reported still living in his central Moscow apartment.