When Nikita Khrushchev addressed the U.N. General Assembly in 1960, the Soviet leader pounded a shoe on his desk and assured Americans that ``we will bury you.'' On Tuesday, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent word of his intention to seek ``real political cooperation'' with the United States one day before his speech to the General Assembly. Times have changed in 28 years. Soviet attitudes toward the West and the United Nations are radically different with widespread talk of diplomacy and cooperation. In 1960, Khrushchev was enraged over Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold's action in sending U.N. peacekeeping troops to the Congo, then a key Soviet client state. ``The General Assembly of 1960 was the greatest circus in the history of the United Nations,'' said Brian Urquhart, who then was undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping operations. In those days, world leaders often spent weeks attending the General Assembly and sat with their delegations much of the time. Roaming the floor of the Assembly were Cuba's Fidel Castro, King Hussein of Jordan, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nassar, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Khrushchev, destined to be the star performer. Sometimes crude and profane, and always easily angered, Khrushchev created the most memorable scene in U.N. debate by pounding a shoe on the Soviet delegation's desk for a point of order. Philippine delegate Lorenzo Sumulong had just referred to the nations of Eastern Europe as being ``deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and which have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union,'' when Khrushchev could stand no more. The Soviet leader slipped off his right shoe and waved it menacingly at Sumulong. The debate continued. The Soviet leader began pounding the shoe on the delegation's desk, shocking the assembly, and shouting: ``Point of order.'' Continuing, Khrushchev called Sumulong a ``toady of American imperialism.'' Khrushchev, bellowing in Russian, said the Congo was struggling to throw off imperialism, and then told General Assembly President Frederick Boland that ``we live on Earth not by the grace of God nor, sir, by your grace, but by the strength and intelligence of the great people of the Soviet Union and of all the peoples which are fighting for their independence.'' ``Khrushchev got so abusive that the Irish president of the assembly, Freddie Boland, broke the gavel in calling him to order, and the head of the gavel flew off into the General Assembly,'' said Urquhart. The most famous shoe in political history remained perched on the desk of the Soviet delegation. A U.N. visit by a Soviet leader is a rarity; the foreign minister usually delivers the annual address to the General Assembly. Between Khrushchev and Gorbachev, the only other top-ranking Soviet visitor was Premier Alexei Kosygin, the chief administrator of the government, who came to the United Nations in 1967 to support Arab complaints against Israel.
