It took 25 days, and nearly as many tantrums, for Nikita Khrushchev finally to win a vote in the United Nations. In getting his way, Khrushchev banged his fists, took off a shoe and thumped it on his desk, shook a finger under the nose of a Spanish delegate, and harangued the world in a purple-faced passion.
He called names like an angry child. The ten-nation disarmament committee, he said, was a stable with a stench that "an honest man could not breathe"; the Security Council was "a spittoon, even worse than a spittoon—a cuspidor"; Nationalist China was "a corpse we have to cast right out of here, straight to hell." From places and things he descended to personalities: Syngman Rhee was "a throttler and choker of the Korean people," Philippine Delegate Lorenzo Sumulong "a jerk and a lackey," Dag Hammarskjold "a fool" and President Dwight Eisenhower "a liar." As for the United Nations itself, "the U.N. is the U.S., it's all one; after all, it's a branch of the State Department."
The Knife. Disappointment and near disaster trailed Nikita Khrushchev around the city. He engaged in a TV shouting match with an interviewer nearly as brash as himself—frenetic Producer David Susskind (see SHOW BUSINESS). Even Khrushchev's grisly jokes went sour. Asked by newsmen if he had changed his mind on disarmament, Khrushchev produced a penknife, said "I have this," and wondered aloud if the knife "could puncture such a sack" as the U.S.'s stout ambassador to the U.N., James J. Wadsworth.
In midweek Khrushchev anxiously nursed forward the one Soviet issue that had any hope of winning a favorable U.N. vote: a resolution demanding immediate freedom for all colonies everywhere. One after another, Afro-Asian delegates marched to the podium to promise their votes. Then Philippine Delegate Lorenzo Sumulong urged that the resolution be widened to include discussion of "the inalienable right to independence of the peoples of Eastern Europe."
Near panic set in among the Communist delegates. Rumania's Deputy Foreign Minister Eduard Mezincescu popped up on a point of order, and Khrushchev took off his shoe, waved it and pounded it. Then, apparently dissatisfied with Mezincescu's protest, Nikita Khrushchev strode briskly down the aisle to pour vituperation on Sumulong.
The Gavel. When U.S. Delegate Francis O. Wilcox brought up the same unpleasant item of Communist subject nations, Rumania's Mezincescu, clearly feeling he had not been noisy or rude enough before, interrupted with a frenzied, podium-pounding display. He shouted that Assembly President Frederick Boland was partial toward "supporters of the colonialists," and Khrushchev again took off his shoe and thumped his desk with it. To restore order, President Boland pounded his gavel until it broke. "Because of the scene you have just witnessed," Boland coldly told the delegates, "I think the Assembly had better adjourn." It was the most disorderly session in U.N. history, and the first ever to end in mid-speech.