Up for auction from Nick Gromicko’s personal collection of political memorabilia is the infamous shoe (and its mate) which Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banged on the dais while speaking at the United Nations in 1960.
This unique item was used by the volatile head of the Soviet delegation as a gavel when he was finally given leave to address the General Assembly on October 12, 1960. Reacting to criticism by a Philippine delegate, who charged that the U.S.S.R. had “swallowed up Eastern Europe,” the Cold War leader, known to pound desks for emphasis with some frequency, took umbrage at the accusation, and countered that many Western nations were guilty of colonialism.
Although there exist various disputed photos, videos, and accounts of whether the Premier banged or merely brandished his shoe, the provenance of the pair has been authenticated by a member of Khrushchev’s family, who was also present at the notorious incident.
Years ago I sent a PIC of them to his daughter who was a professor at NYU. She told me that they were his shoes. She knew because the laces are fake. The U.S.S.R. made fake laces (for the first time, for him) so that he could slip them on because he was too fat to bend over and tie them. LOL. But she said that he never beat a podium with a shoe and that that was just U.S. propaganda.
My great uncle Andrei Gromyko (who was called “Stone Face,” because he never expressed emotion during the Cuban Missile Crisis with Kennedy) didn’t approve of the outburst and said that Khrushchev made the U.S.S.R. “Look like a bunch of peasants” when he banged his shoe on the podium. Khrushchev said he didn’t mean to but had the shoe in his hand at the time because the new laceless shoes were too tight and hurting his feet. So my uncle took them from him so that he never did that again.