Beyond the Shoe: Rethinking Khrushchev at the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Abstract

History tends to remember Soviet participation at the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UN GA, September 1960–April 1961) because of Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe. On October 13, 1960, the Soviet leader allegedly banged his shoe against his desk in the General Assembly hall to protest a speech he did not like.1 The incident is among the most well known in the history of the Cold War. However, despite the interest it has generated, Khrushchev’s conduct was the least important aspect of Soviet relations with the UN in 1960–61. This article reassesses Soviet participation at the Fifteenth Session of the GA in light of its medium- and long-term consequences for UN structure, practices, and vision. It also brings the issue of Moscow’s relations with UN members from the Third World, until now overlooked in the existing literature, into the story of this UN session. ... The Congo crisis was the key event that soured Soviet-UN relations in the second half of 1960. The USSR had been deeply involved in Congo since the early stages of the crisis, which was caused by foreign intervention and the attempted secession of a Congolese province in July 1960. Baffled by the West’s superior influence on the UN operation set up in Congo to address the crisis, the USSR attempted to change the balance of forces by trying to attract the support of the non-aligned bloc and reform the whole UN organization. The Fifteenth Session of the GA, which Khrushchev decided to attend in person, was meant to be the decisive moment. According to most of the existing literature, the plan did not succeed, and Khrushchev was reduced to banging his shoe in frustration. This view argues that the Afro-Asian countries remained indifferent to Khrushchev’s grievances and calls for reform, and thus did not support Soviet proposals to radically redesign the UN structure, notably by eliminating the post of Secretary-General (SG), and to change the way the UN mission operated in Congo, reducing Western influence.2 In his recent book on the USSR and the UN, Ilya V. Gaiduk writes that “Khrushchev’s plans to get rid of [UN Secretary-General Dag] Hammarskjöld and to change the UN policy in the Congo and elsewhere, while gaining the newly independent countries’ sympathies for Moscow’s position, failed abjectly.”3 Lise Namikas supports a more balanced view in her book on the Congo crisis. She maintains that the United States largely succeeded in using the UN “to achieve its own goals in the Congo,” but she concedes that the UN operation in Congo “allowed a degree of influence that Moscow lacked in Africa previously, and for that Khrushchev should be given credit.”4