50th anniversary of the kitchen debate
Friday is the 50th anniversary of one of the more bizarre clashes of the cold war: the “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon, then 46 and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, and Nikita Khrushchev, the cunning peasant who at 65 had just finished consolidating his position at the pinnacle of Soviet power.
Unscripted and often raw, it was one of the few times Soviet and American leaders publicly vented at each other. After the brash and mercurial Khrushchev was ousted, summit meetings became choreographed shows.
Nixon, too, would fall from power, 10 years after Khrushchev, but both men relished recalling a debate that went to the very heart of the difference in their systems and beliefs.
Read entire article at NYT
Unscripted and often raw, it was one of the few times Soviet and American leaders publicly vented at each other. After the brash and mercurial Khrushchev was ousted, summit meetings became choreographed shows.
Nixon, too, would fall from power, 10 years after Khrushchev, but both men relished recalling a debate that went to the very heart of the difference in their systems and beliefs.