60 years ago, Khrushchev’s speech at the UN was heatedly discussed in the world news, giving rise to more than one myth, some of which live to this day. We are trying to understand one of these stories.

On October 12, 1960, the famous meeting of the UN General Assembly took place, during which Khrushchev supposedly pounded his shoe on the podium. Although the world's leading media outlets wrote about this incident and photographs even appeared in the press, the veracity of the story was soon questioned. serious doubts, and the photo was recognized fake. However, a strong image was fixed in people’s minds, and subsequently merged with Khrushchev’s shocking statement about Kuzka’s mother. Let's figure out how things really happened.

If the story of the possible use of the boot is recalled by witnesses differently, with Kuzka’s mother everything is much more clear. Khrushchev actually promised to show it to the Americans, but a year earlier - and not in New York, but in Moscow. In 1959, it opened in Sokolniki American National Exhibition, designed to demonstrate to Soviet citizens the latest developments in overseas industry. Vice President Nixon and General Secretary Khrushchev came to the opening of the exhibition, where the so-called kitchen debate - a debate about the pros and cons of communism and capitalism for the average citizen. Personal translator of Soviet party leaders Viktor Sukhodrev remembered:

At that time, famous five-story buildings were being built in our country, and Khrushchev, naturally, tried to convince the guest that it was necessary to build not individual private houses, but apartment buildings. And everything was fine until Nikita Sergeevich got angry and promised Nixon show the Americans Kuzka's mother. My colleague from the translation bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yuri Lepanov, who accompanied Khrushchev that day, adhered to his own method of translating idiomatic expressions: first he translated everything word for word, and then explained it. And then at the exhibition he first translated: “We will show you Kuzma’s mother” - and then tried to explain what this meant, but, it seems, not very successfully.

Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon at an exhibition in Sokolniki (AP Photo)

Sukhodrev recalls that the expression “Kuzka’s mother” was generally one of Khrushchev’s favorite idioms - he also used it during that very trip to the USA in 1960. Before visiting the UN, the Soviet leader visited several American cities, including Los Angeles. Khrushchev described his impressions So: “Yes, of course, everything is arranged neatly, clean, people are well dressed... But nothing. We’ll also show you Kuzka’s mother...” However, Khrushchev’s speech at the UN was much less expressive, and in it this expression not mentioned. The delegates present at the meeting do not remember Kuzka’s mother either.

By the way, the Soviet leader interpreted the meaning of this expression incorrectly. In Dahl’s collection “Proverbs of the Russian People,” the proverb “I’ll show you Kuzka’s mother” is located in the section about threats—perhaps that’s why the translators saw aggression in Khrushchev’s statement. The Secretary General himself believed that the idiom meant “show something they have never seen.”