Today is the anniversary of an odd, infamous event: Nikita Khrushchev waving—or perhaps banging—
his shoe at the United Nations. On
October 12, 1960, the Soviet premier was addressing the General Assembly in New
York. He was incensed about a delegate’s
attack on the emasculation of the Eastern Bloc by the U.S.S.R.
The image of a bellicose Khrushchev would
resurface over the next few years until his fall from power in 1964. I’m sure that Emily Post would have found his
conduct quite boorish.
I’ve been studying Khrushchev recently because of my
research on Robert Frost’s cultural exchange tour to Russia in September 1962. Sent by JFK, Frost met with Khrushchev and
seemed to fall under the Soviet leader’s spell.
Frost considered him "a great man" who understood how to use
power. The legendary poet, then
eighty-eight and politically naïve, talked about the two "democracies”--the United States and Soviet Union--competing with the outcome a sort of
may-the-best country-win attitude.
Upon returning to the United Nations, Frost told journalists
that “Khrushchev said that we were too liberal to fight.” That flippant comment, which may or may not
have an accurate report from Frost, caused his estrangement from President
Kennedy.
Kennedy, of course, had a significant confrontation with his
Soviet counterpart the following month with the tension-filled Cuban Missile
Crisis. The president was largely seen
as practicing shrewd but restrained brinksmanship, and yet Khrushchev proved to be
a less belligerent, more conventional adversary than assumed.
I haven't confirmed the type and color of the shoe which
became the focus of worldwide attention fifty-eight years ago, but I’m assuming
it was a black slip-on.
The photograph here is from the JFK-Khrushchev summit in
Vienna in June 1961, which did not go well for President Kennedy. It is from the U.S. Department of State in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston; unknown copyright.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.