Khrushchev fabrication

[Richard Robin]

This discussion is taking on religious tones. I agree with Peter Scotto. The
issue here is not whether Khrushchev pounded his shoe. The overwhelming
eyewitness evidence suggests that he did. But many have written that they
remember *video clips* of the shoe-pounding.

I myself used to think that I *saw* NK pounding his shoe. But at some point
in the 1980s, I realized that I had never seen the footage repeated on the
many TV documentaries about the cold war. Think of all the famous historical
moments we have etched in our memories because we have seen them not once
but many times: the Zapruder film, Armstrong on the moon, Kennedy's "Ask
not" inaugural, Yuri Gagarin smiling... I have seen lots of NK footage -
almost always at the podium in a Kremlin address. So where's the shoe
pounding? It's missing -- not because it didn't happen, but maybe because no
one filmed it. So I second Peter's motion: if the clip exists, where can it
be found?

-Rich Robin

Richard Robin, Associate Professor
German and Slavic Dept.
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20008
rrobin at gwu.edu
http://home.gwu.edu/~rrobin
Читаю по-русски во всех кодировках.
Chitayu po-russki vo vsex kodirovkax.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alina Israeli" <aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU>
To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Khrushchev fabrication


> >My point is not that Khrushchev did or didn't pound his shoe, but where
> >the image that we all "remember" of Khrushchev pounding his shoe came
> >from.  I believe that it was nothing more than some footage of Khrushchev
> >delivering a vigourous speech and that we all just assumed that this was
> >film the shoe pounding incident.
> >
> >Now this whole thing should be fairly easy to resolve.  If someone can
> >produce footage of Khrushchev pounding his shoe at the UN, I'll go away.
>
>
>
> There are many things so outrageous that unless they happen no one
> could have invented them. That is why some people deny they ever
> happened or existed, be it in their own lives or in world history.
> There is a movement called by their opponents "Holocaust denial",
> "denial" is also a term used in (popular) psychology. Please note,
> they deny the bad events they cannot face up, never the good ones.
>
> Ask yourself: Do we have any other "outrageous fabrications" about
> leaders of other countires? Is there a precedent? If it were a
> fabrication, whom would it serve? The shoe story pales compared to
> some outrageous behavior described by Khrushchev himself. And those
> outrageous things were not done in the privacy of his dacha but at
> foreign residences of his hosts. If those stories became public they
> would have been much more damaging (and probably no one would have
> believed them anyway, but we have his own word).
>
> True, there are some non-dying myths, but they are usually on the
> positive side, like the one about the King of Denmark who wore the
> yellow star under the occupation. (Boris Xazanov wrote a very
> touching "povest'" on the subject.) Those are born out of human
> desire to believe in humanity, to find something positive. "Holocaust
> denials" are actually their brothers, they don't want to believe in
> bad things even when you do show them the footage.
>
> If I told you something unbelievably good about Khrushchev, would you
> believe me or ask for a footage or hand-written testimony? I tend to
> think that you would have believed me. And why would that be? Isn't
> there a positive-color filter (inside the pupil of your eye) that
> filters out the bad stuff and keeps the good?
>
> What's good for your friends is not necessarily good for history.
> --
> __________
> Alina Israeli
> LFS, American University
> 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
> Washington, DC 20016
>
> phone:  (202) 885-2387
> fax:    (202) 885-1076
>
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