12.9.03

Memories of Khrushchev
"Ascherson is wrong, though, to put the words 'we will bury you' among his 'frightful eruptions of bullying rage'. I was there when he spoke them, at a Polish Embassy reception early in 1957. They came at the end of a typically long and rambling speech explaining how the USSR would overtake the US 'within twenty years' in the production of steel, coal and other key goods. He finished up with: 'We will bury you.' In Russian this simply means 'we will be at your funeral,' but it suited many in the West to interpret it as one of the most dangerous threats ever to emerge from Moscow."
John Rettie 11 September 2003
London Review of Books