There was something chilly about Khrushchev, pounding his shoe and threatening to bury capitalism, at the UN. Contrasting his own poverty with the affluent backgrounds of those Western figures he dealt with, he seemed to imply their good manners were a weakness. “You all went to great schools, to famous universities—to Harvard, Oxford, the Sorbonne,” he once boasted to Western diplomats. “I never had any proper schooling. I went about barefoot and in rags. When you were in the nursery, I was herding cows for two kopeks.... And yet here we are, and I can run rings around you all.... Tell me,
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