UP ONE LEVEL

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - John Chrystal, an Iowa farmer and banker who followed in his uncle's footsteps as Cold War-era agricultural adviser to Soviet leaders, has died at 74.

Chrystal died of cancer Wednesday.

In 1959, with the Cold War in full swing, then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev toured the United States and made a much-publicized stop at the Coon Rapids, Iowa, farm of Roswell Garst, Chrystal's uncle. Garst had already visited the Soviet Union as part of a farm delegation.

Chrystal later recalled the visit as "like somebody coming from Mars. The Highway Patrol, the National Guard, the newspaper people nearly destroyed the town. I'd never seen anything like it.''

In 1960, when Roswell was invited to the Soviet Union and didn't want to go, he offered me on a platter,'' Chrystal said. ``I had never been east of Notre Dame before.''

From that time on, Chrystal traveled about every other year to the Soviet Union at the government's invitation. He toured the land, dined with Khrushchev and, in the early '80s, talked farming with Mikhail Gorbachev when the future Soviet leader was still an obscure official.

"If we can become less afraid of each other, we have a better chance of stopping the arms race and not blowing each other up,'' Chrystal said in a 1987 interview. ``I think it's the proper thing for an American to do.''

Sizing up Gorbachev, he said: "He is smart and confident. Self-confidence gives you the ability to be self-critical. Gorbachev is willing to recognize the shortcomings of the economy and the country and ask other people to work with him.''

Chrystal was chairman and chief executive of Bankers Trust Inc. and a partner with his brother on the family farm.

He also was a former state banking superintendent and president of the Iowa

Bankers Association and Iowa Civil Liberties Union. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 1990.

"He had a keen perspective on political affairs, unclouded by ideology or bias,'' longtime friend Sen. Tom Harkin said Thursday.