Saturday, November 29, 2008

Remembering Khrushchev

Perhaps readers who are my age or older recall Khrushchev banging his shoe on a desk at the U.N. in 1960.

Now, I'm wondering if I remember the incident correctly.


Meesha put some pictures from that time on his blog, and that made me remember the shoe incident. Surely I could find a picture of this on the vast Internet. Right?

I could not. But there's always Youtube. Maybe I'd find an old news clip there. I'm positive I remember watching the news and seeing Khrushchev bang his shoe.

Meesha included a picture of Nakita with the fabled shoe in hand, in answer to a comment I made. But did he bang the shoe, or merely wave it?


Perhaps my memory isn't so sharp after all. I could have sworn I saw him bang that shoe on his desk on the black-and-white TV news.

4 comments:

  1. In the wikipedia article they quote:Khrushchev's great-granddaughter Nina Khrushcheva writes that after years of embarrassed silence her family explained how exactly that happened. Khrushchev was wearing new and tight shoes so that he took them off while sitting. When he started pounding the table with his fist during his angry response his wristwatch fell off. When he was picking it up his shoes caught his eye... She also mentions that multiple versions of the incident have been in circulation with various dates and occasions.

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  2. What??!! Nakita didn't bang his shoe? I distinckly (spelling?) remember the shoe thing. It just gave me another reason to be scared silly of Communism and the whole cold war thing. I used to be afraid they were coming onto the beach in AC at night and I was sleeping three blocks away. Marlene

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  3. Anonymous11:32 AM

    I am sure I remember him banging his shoe!

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  4. I'm positive I remember him banging his shoe. Were we manipulated into thinking that?

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