Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich

Russian Soviet Communist politician

secretary-general of Soviet Communist Party 1953-1964

at 20th Communist Party Congress, denounced Joseph Stalin 1956

premier of Soviet Union 1958-1964

engaged in "kitchen debate" with Richard Nixon at US Exhibition in Moscow 1959

at meeting of UN 1960, banged shoe on table to express anger at Philippine ambassador's suggestion that decolonization resolution proposed by Soviets should also apply to Soviet-bloc Eastern Europe

• "There are still some people who think that we have Stalin to thank for all our progress, who quake before Stalin's dirty underdrawers, who stand at attention and salute them."
• "I once said,'We will bury you,'and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you."
• "Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man."
• "Revolutions are the locomotives of history."
• "[Asking to meet with Italian businessmen instead of government officials.] I want to talk to these people because they stay in power and you change all the time."