Nixon back in Moscow

Apr. 10, 1965 - Richard M. Nixon came back to Moscow today and found himself in another debate.

But his encounter with a leading official of the University of Moscow paled in comparison with the famous 1959 “kitchen debate” in which, as Vice President, he exchanged views with Nikita Khrushchev, then Premier.

Today’s debate took place at the university when he was greeted by the deputy rector, Nikolai Seleyezov.

Seleyezov said he did not want to talk about the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society and other “reactionary” organizations but about what he should tell his students when they asked, as they often did, how it could happen in a freedom-loving country that a President could be killed.

Nixon replied that evidently the U.S. was not perfect, and he added: “But we in turn could ask: ‘What happened to Beria? Why was he killed? Trotsky, what happened to him?’”

Lavrenti Beria, First Deputy Premier, was ousted as an enemy of the people in July 1953 and was executed on Dec. 23 that year. Leon Trotsky, an exiled Soviet War Minister, was assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Nixon went on to say: “If you want to talk about force, then we should talk about Soviet action against the freedom fighters in Hungary.” He was referring to the crushing by Soviet troops of the anti-Communist uprising in 1956.

As for the Klan, he said: “You can tell your students we are trying to remove all vestiges of prejudice and hatred as evidenced by the Ku Klux Klan. We are trying to remove inequity and win the war against poverty in the United States. We have not succeeded as well as we would like, and under our free system, our failures are always advertised.”

On his arrival today, Nixon, referring to Khrushchev, who was deposed in October, said: “If I see him, we will have a friendly discussion. If we’ve retired, we’ve both retired involuntarily.”

After his exchange with Seleyezov, Nixon held an improvised news conference at the U.S. Embassy. Asked about his views on Vietnam, he said he had supported President Johnson’s “strong stand” in the past but that he had not yet had an opportunity to read the President’s latest speech and therefore could not judge it.

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