June 1960
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national
liberation" in an address to the United Nations in New York. At one point
during the speech, Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged it on the table.
(One of his biographers speculated that this was designed to improve his image
at home.) Khrushchev came to New York in the middle of the 1960 Presidential
election campaign. His U.N. address awakened Western fears that he planned to
aid Communist revolutionary movements around the world. After his U.N. speech,
Fidel Castro, leader of the recent revolution in Cuba, visited Khrushchev in
his hotel room.
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