Supposedly.
I’ve seen a number of times over the years that he never said that.
Almost certainly, since he didn’t speak English.
But did he ever indeed say something on which this quote is based?
If so, what was it, when was it said, and in what context?
Said in November, 1956 at a reception he was hosting in Moscow for ambassadors from various western states. The full quote is “History is on our side. We will bury you.”
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I’ve heard before that the statement was misunderstood as being more threatening than it sounded. Kruschev’s meaning was simply that communism would eventually bury capitalism due to its superiority as a philosophy. Guess he was a bit off the mark.
The last portion of his speech has been forgotten by history. He said… “History is on our side. We will bury you in fine shoes [produces shoe and pounds it on table] you hear that? Quality!”
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I don’t have a cite for this, but I did read it “somewhere”. The sense of what Khrushchev said works out more like “we will outlive you”. Perhaps there is a metaphor that got translated literally.
It’s quoted and cited in this week’s Newsweek.
And Krushchev did indeed mean “we will outlive you” not “we will destroy you.”
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IIRC, Nikita quoted an old Russian proverb that warned against reckless self-destructive behavoir.
It’s equivalent (but not as malicious) as the English saying “I will dance on your grave.”
(This is not to say however, that within the Kremlin, Nikita and the boys weren’t constantly acting to perpetuate their tyranny at home and extend it abroad. He believed that given time and by avoiding nuclear war, Communism would sweep the world.)
Nikita Kruschev’s son is now a US citizen (he is an assistant prof at a Boston University). He was asked about this famous quote a while ago, and confirmed that his dad meant it as a friendly warning. Of course, the old fool also used to pound the podium at the UN with his shoe…
Supposedly, that wasn’t the only misconstruction of Kruschev’s statements. Essentially a down-to-earth farm boy, Kruschev’s manner of speaking was not unlike the American equivalent of, say… a sailor, or perhaps an Army drill sargeant. Kruschev’s translators supposedly were hard pressed to tone down his colorful statements for diplomatic consumption.
What I meant to say was… oh, hell with it.
To SofaKing: Was this speech, in which Nikita allegedly said “We will bury you!”, the same speech in which he pounded the desk with his shoe–or was it even the same day?
The late Soviet leader Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev spoke no English. Therefore he never said, “We will bury you.” He did say, “My Vas pokhoronim,” which means roughly the same thing in Russian.
In my very humble opinion, a slightly more accurate translation would be “we will have a funeral for you.” Or perhaps “we will funerate you.” 
Didn’t we just cover this a few weeks back?
I think dlv wins the prize.
I was looking for the literal translation of what Nikita Sergeyevitch said.
It truly was “We will have a funeral for you,” which is sorta close to “We will bury you.”
However, placed in context with his prior statement (“History is on our side. . .”), it does ostensibly indicate that he meant it in the sense of “We will outlast you.”
Thanks a bunch.
Thanks for your kind words.
I’ll share what I think he meant. (This is entirely my speculation, so please take it with an appropriately sized grain of salt.) As an orthodox Communist, Khrushchev believed that all societies go through stages characterized by the mode of production: Feudalism (e.g. Tokugawa-like Japan) is less “progessive” than Capitalism, which in turn is less “progessive” than Communism. U.K. capitalism during the industrial revolution is less “progressive” than modern U.S. capitalism. (This is Karl Marx’s application of Hegel’s notion of zeitgeist.) According to Communist practicioners (like Lenin), a society can skip a stage (e.g. the People’s Republic of Monglia tried to move from feudalism to communism, bypassing capitalism) but can’t forestall “progress”.
The “history is on our side” remark shows that, unlike the Americans, he didn’t view the Cold War as a contest between two competing systems where a “superior” one would win. Being a Communist, he believed that even if the U.S.S.R. did nothing, the contradictions inherent in the American society (class and gender/race anatagonisms) would grow and eventually cause a violent collapse, from which a Communist U.S. would emerge. During his U.S. visit, he compared this country to a patient who looks healthy on the outside, but has a terminal disease (which is how Marxism views any society).
FWIW, I don’t think he meant “ee will clobber you over the head with a hammer and a sickle and then we’ll dig a hole in the ground and cover your dead body with dirt,” which is what “bury” connotes. He did not only mean “We will outlast you,” because to him this was as obvious as remarking “the sky is blue”. (Like a Christian saying, “Mary is the mother of Jesus.”) I think he really meant something like “when you [your society] die of natural causes, instead of letting the dogs and the pigs gnaw at your rotting corpse, we’ll have a nice funeral service for you, with eulogies and lots of flowers.”
This is just my personal opinion - take it or leave it (gee, isn’t lit crit fun )