Mr And Mrs K. Living Quietly These Days

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31075, 2 June 1966, Page 13

Mr And Mrs K. Living Quietly These Days

MOSCOW, June 1. Mr Nikita Khrushchev

is fit and well, enjoys walking in the countryside for relaxation, and reads a lot, his wife said this week.

“We live quietly these days. Our old friends come to see us from time to time, and we have the family, of course,” Mrs Nina Khrushchev, aged 66, said in an unusual interview.

Three British reporters saw Mr Khrushchev’s wife by chance at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. She was there to say goodbye to a niece leaving for Cuba.

Mrs Khrushchev said her husband, aged 72 last month, had made a full recovery after a long bout of kidney trouble. He had been in hospital twice, she said. But now “he is fully recovered and is fit and well.”

Mr Khrushchev, Russia’s leader for 10 years, has not been seen by foreigners for more than a year. He was ousted from the Premiership and Communist Party leadership in October, 1964, and now lives in retirement on a State pension. Mrs Khrushchev, a former schoolteacher, chatted in English for nearly 15 minutes in the airport booking hall. None of the many Russians bustling about appeared to notice her.

Mr Khrushchev spends

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright)

much time reading books about nature lore, Mrs Khrushchev said, adding: “He likes books like that.” Asked if her husband planned to write his own memoirs, she smiled and an-

swered: "No. At least not now, perhaps later.” Mr Khrushchev was dropped last month from membership of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, and a Moscow factoryworker was nominated to replace him as a Deputy in the Supreme Soviet.