Home
|
Written by Truth About Trade & Technology
|
|
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 03:45 |
Des Moines Register
August 23, 2009
By WILLIAM PETROSKI
bpetroski@dmreg.com
A delegation of 36 Russians will arrive in Iowa this week to recall a historic event in 1959 in which a capitalist corn farmer from Coon Rapids hosted the leader of a Communist superpower during the height of the Cold War.
Relatives of the two primary participants - Iowan Roswell Garst and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev - said it is hard to envision a modern comparison to what happened in Iowa 50 years ago.
"I don't think there is an equivalent," said Sergei Khrushchev, a former Soviet missile engineer and the son of Nikita Khrushchev. "It is a very different world. There is only one superpower."
Elizabeth "Liz" Garst, a Coon Rapids businesswoman and the granddaughter of Roswell Garst, agrees.
"The visit was just out of the realm of conceivable," she said. "The equivalent today would be the head of North Korea showing up or the head of Iran."
The impact of Khrushchev's visit continues today in the state's legacy of internationalism, Liz Garst said. This has included efforts such as the World Food Prize and a host of organizations that promote citizen education and exchanges, such as the Iowa Council for International Understanding, the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, the Sister States and Sister Cities programs and others.
Iowa citizen exchanges with Russia and the former Soviet Union include a 1986 walk across the state by U.S. and Soviet citizens interested in nuclear disarmament and establishment of a sister state relationship with Stavropol in 1988.
The visits of Garst to Russia and Khrushchev to Iowa also fit the pattern of Iowa's history of agricultural exchanges and initiatives to build agricultural-based trade.
Conferences, banquet mark anniversary
Four days of conferences, a banquet and a farm progress festival are scheduled Thursday through Sunday for the "Khrushchev in Iowa" 50th anniversary observance, which will celebrate agriculture's contributions to international understanding. More than 30 Iowa organizations helped to plan the activities, most of which are open to the public.
Khrushchev, who rose to power after the 1953 death of dictator Josef Stalin, became the first leader of the Soviet Union to visit the United States. His stops during a 13-day tour in September 1959 included Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New York and Iowa.
He spent two days in the state, visiting Iowa State University in Ames, Deere & Co.'s farm implement plant in Ankeny, Bookey Meat Packing in Des Moines and a farm near Indianola.
He stayed overnight at the Hotel Fort Des Moines and spent an entire day at Roswell Garst's farm near Coon Rapids, where he and Garst were trailed by a crowd of 600 reporters and photographers.
Khrushchev arrived in Iowa at the invitation of Garst, a leader in the seed corn business and a citizen diplomat who had once remarked, "One of the most dangerous things that I can conceive for the world would be to have a Russia that is both hungry and has the H-bomb."
The two men became good friends, both with rough-edged, blunt-speaking personalities. They were intrigued by the enormous potential of agricultural innovation.
The Soviet premier was eager to bolster his country's production of meat, milk, eggs and grain. In Iowa, he saw the potential for dramatic advances in agriculture provided by hybrid seed corn, modern tractors and harvesting equipment, nitrogen fertilizer and other innovations.
Khrushchev's son back in Iowa this week
Sergei Khrushchev will return this week to speak at the conference.
Just 24 years old when he accompanied his father to Iowa in 1959, the former Communist leader's son is now a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in Rhode Island. He recalled his father's trip to the Garst family's farm as a sign of mutual understanding on a person-to-person level, even though Garst was a dedicated capitalist and Nikita Khrushchev had vowed that communism would bury capitalism.
"I think that Mr. Garst's relations with my father were not less important than his relations with the American president," Sergei Khrushchev said in an interview last week. "They understood each other, and they represented the mood of the people."
The impetus for the trip to Garst's farm, about 70 miles northwest of Des Moines, began more than four years earlier. Khrushchev had urged the Soviet Central Committee to increase the use of hybrid seed corn, and Soviet and Western news organizations picked up the story.
Loren Soth, then editor of The Des Moines Register's editorial page, responded with an editorial on Feb. 10, 1955, in which he invited the Soviets to come to Iowa to learn about raising livestock and crops.
"We promise to hide none of our 'secrets,' " wrote Soth, who was later awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the editorial. A translation of the Register's editorial landed on Khrushchev's desk in the Kremlin the following day, according to Sergei Khrushchev.
Soth's proposal led to agricultural exchanges between both countries, including visits by Soviet farm experts to the Garsts' sprawling 2,600-acre farm.
Roswell Garst first visited the Soviet Union in 1955, when he was entertained by Khrushchev at his summer residence in the Crimea. The meeting led to the purchase of 5,000 tons of seed corn by the Soviets.
Of course, Khrushchev's September 1959 visit did not end the Cold War. In May 1960, the Soviets shot down a U.S. spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers, causing the collapse of diplomatic talks in Paris after President Dwight Eisenhower refused to apologize to the Soviets. That fall came the famous incident at the United Nations, when Khrushchev banged his shoe on a table after taking offense at another delegate's words.
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961, and the United States and Soviet Union edged to the brink of nuclear war in October 1962, after the United States discovered the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. In 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power.
Rachel Garst, another granddaughter of Roswell Garst, is co-chairwoman of the planning committee for the conference. She said the 36 Russian visitors include various government officials and Victor Lischenko, director of the Center for International Agribusiness at the Russian Academy of National Economy. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also is scheduled to speak.
Harry Bookey, a Des Moines businessman, was 11 when Khrushchev visited his father's meatpacking plant and sampled hot dogs after a security agent checked them with a Geiger counter. Khrushchev put his arm around the boy, who told the Soviet leader, "Maybe you can beat us to the moon, but we can beat you in sausages."
Khrushchev replied, "We make sausages in Russia, too. But you make more here."
Bookey's father, Lester, asked, "How do ours taste?" Khrushchev responded, "Excellent, excellent."
Soviet Union collapse hampers relations
Ties between people and places in Iowa and Russia have been hampered by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and its disintegration into many different entities instead of one, said Valentina Slater-Fominykh, a past president of Humanities Iowa and a young girl in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan in 1959. But she sees the conference as an opportunity to rekindle the relationship between the former adversaries.
Fominykh was raised in an area that became the center of a vast agricultural project initiated by Khrushchev. She came to Iowa in 1990, working closely with the late John Chrystal, Roswell Garst's nephew and a longtime advocate of peaceful relations between the United States and Moscow.
"Without trust and without good personal relationships like the ones that were established between Khrushchev and Garst, nothing would have happened," Fominykh said.
An unlikely alliance
A look at two men who forged a friendship despite differences in their own views and hostilities between their countries.
ROSWELL GARST
ABOUT: He was perhaps Iowa’s most famous farmer, a colorful man and an unusual diplomat who helped bring warmth to the Cold War.
BORN: 1898, the son of Coon Rapids merchant Edward Garst and his wife, Bertha. Garst attends Iowa State College, Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin but does not earn a degree.
FAMILY: Marries in 1921. His wife, Elizabeth, was a history teacher. The couple have two sons and three daughters.
EARLY CAREER: Begins farming in 1916. Lives in Des Moines from 1926 to 1930 to try his hand at real estate. Meets Henry A. Wallace and becomes enthusiastic about Wallace’s ideas for hybrid seed corn.
THE COMPANY: In 1930, Garst and Coon Rapids friend Charles Thomas establish the Garst & Thomas Hybrid Corn Co. and become the Midwest marketers of Wallace’s Pioneer Hi-Bred brand corn. Garst, a master salesman, becomes wealthy.
INFORMAL AMBASSADOR: In 1955, makes his first visit behind the Iron Curtain to market corn to the Russians. Garst parlays meetings with Soviet agriculturalists into a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev at the Kremlin. Garst sells some seed corn to Khrushchev. Garst is invited back to the Soviet Union twice more and, in 1958, Khrushchev asks him to bring his wife along. Elizabeth Garst invites the Khrushchevs to visit the Garsts at their farm in Coon Rapids.
DIES: 1977, at age 79. His wife, Elizabeth, dies in 1996 at nearly 101.
WHITEROCK CONSERVANCY: The Garst family decides in 2004 to donate its land to ensure its protection and public access to it.
Sources: Famous Iowans, by Tom Longden; Whiterock Conservancy; Register archives
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
ABOUT: A Russian Communist leader and Soviet premier, he was a major force in world politics who led the Soviet Union in the 1960s at the
height of the Cold War.
BORN: 1894, in Kalinovka, southern Russia. At 15, he becomes an apprentice mechanic in Ukraine.
FAMILY: Marries in 1915, but his wife dies during a famine. In 1924, marries Nina Petrovna, a schoolteacher. The couple have two children.
EARLY CAREER: He’s a repairman in coal mines for nearly a decade. In 1918, at 24, joins Communist Party. Enrolls in Red Army to fight in the civil war.
COMMUNIST LEADER: Becomes a full-time party secretary. In 1929, attends the Industrial Academy in Moscow for training in industrial administration, leaving in 1931. Within four years, becomes became head of the party organization of Moscow, thus joining the highest ranks of party officials. Survives Joseph Stalin’s purges, and in 1938 is made first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party and is named to the Politburo, the ruling body of the Soviet Communist Party. During World War II, serves in the Red Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant general.
GAINING POWER: After Stalin’s death in 1953, power is concentrated in the hands of eight men. In 1958, becomes chairman of the Council of Ministers, the most powerful man in the country. Khrushchev encourages the policy of de-Stalinization, aimed at ending the worst practices of the Stalin dictatorship. The standard of living rises and the authority of the political police is reduced.
COLD WAR: In 1960, Khrushchev breaks off talks with President Dwight Eisenhower after announcing an American spy plane has been shot down in the Soviet Union. In 1962, the United States and Soviet Union stand at the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
FORCED RETIREMENT: Economic projects fail, and the de-Stalinization process produces unrest in the Communist ranks of other countries. He’s forced into retirement in 1964.
DIES: 1971, at age 77.
Source: notablebiographies.com
Additional Facts
Khrushchev in Iowa
PUBLIC EVENTS
(Events are free unless otherwise noted)
Thursday
Speech by William Taubman
When: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., followed by book signing and reception
Where: Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University
What: Talk by Pulitzer-Prize winning author of "Khrushchev: The Man and His Era" (2003). Taubman will be joined by Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita's son, and David Maxwell, president of Drake University, for a brief discussion and question-and-answer period.
Friday
"Khrushchev in Iowa" Conference
When: 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Hotel Fort Des Moines, 1000 Walnut St., Des Moines
What: Two simultaneous panels:
Feeding a Hungry World: Agricultural Progress, Productivity and Sustainability, featuring Kendall Lamkey, chair of the Iowa State University Department of Agronomy; Ted Crosbie, vice president of global breeding for Monsanto; Bill Northey, Iowa secretary of agriculture; Vic Miller, an Iowa corn and soybean grower and past chairman of the U.S. Grains Council; Victor Lischenko, director of the Center for International Agribusiness at the Russian Academy of National Economy; and other Russian agribusiness leaders
Citizen Diplomacy in U.S.-Russia Relations, featuring Sergei Khrushchev; Ted Townsend of the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy; Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Michael Gartner; Vladimir Sambaiew, president of the Stanley Foundation; Valentina Slater-Fominykh, executive committee member of Humanities Iowa; Rachel Garst, granddaughter of Roswell Garst; and others.
Cost: $25 per person
"Khrushchev in Iowa" Banquet
When: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Hotel Fort Des Moines
What: An evening in the grand ballroom duplicating the same menu served to Khrushchev at the hotel 50 years ago, including split-pea soup, corn-fed Iowa beef, baked potatoes, lima beans, hard rolls, rye bread and peach pie. Also: A performance by the Des Moines Metro Opera. Speakers will include Sergei Khrushchev; U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack; U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley; Lt. Gov. Patty Judge; and Georgy Efremov, deputy governor of Stavropol.
Cost: $125 per person
Saturday
Garst Farm dedication at Whiterock Conservancy
When: 9:45 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Where: Garst Farm at Whiterock Conservancy, 1390 Highway 141, Coon Rapids (70 miles northwest of Des Moines on Highway 141)
What: This ceremony will celebrate the Aug. 12 entry of the Garst Farm into the National Register of Historic Places. Speakers include Antonia Garst Lee, Sergei Khrushchev and Wes Jackson, president of the Kansas Land Institute, who will speak on the genetic potential of the perennialization of corn.
Agricultural Progress Festival in Coon Rapids
What: This will include a farm machinery parade, inauguration of a major public art piece by David Dahlquist, historic film clips, original theater production, family fun activities, food sales, beer garden. When: 1:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
1:30 p.m.: Farm machinery parade
2:30 p.m.: Secretary Vilsack and other dignitaries will give speeches on Main Street
3:30 p.m. and again at 5 p.m.: Inaugural performance of an original 40-minute two-person play, "Peace Through Corn," about the Garst/Khrushchev relationship. At Coon Rapids-Bayard High School.
3:15 p.m. to 10 p.m.: Live music on Main Street
4:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Beer garden on Main Street
Where: Main Street, Coon Rapids
Sunday, August 30
Iowa Sister States "Faces of Iowa/Russia Connections" Symposium and Barbecue
When: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Where: Camp Dodge, 7105 Northwest 70th Ave., Johnston
What: This event is especially for participants in Iowa/Russia exchange programs, or those interested in such face-to-face exchanges. The program includes Iowa Gov. Chet Culver; Deputy Governor of Stavropol Georgy Efremov; and Brig. Gen. Tim Orr, who will speak on the Iowa National Guard's exchange program with the National Guard of Stavropol.
For more information: http://www.creatinggreatplaces.org/khrushchev.aspx
|
|
Newsletter Subscribe
|
.png)
Follow us on Twitter