Tear Down This Wall: Nikita Khrushchev, Address to the UN General Assembly (September 23, 1960)

    Tear Down This Wall: Nikita Khrushchev, Address to the UN General Assembly (September 23, 1960)

      Khrushchev delivered this speech almost thirty years before Reagan urged Gorbachev to tear down the wall. In fact, when this speech was made, the Berlin Wall wasn't even up yet. But if we really want to get a feel for how the Soviets felt about the U.S. and that whole capitalism thing, this is a great speech to read.

      Just like Reagan, Khrushchev uses a lot of freedom talk, even though the freedom he's describing is a little different from the standard Western definition. But Khrushchev points the big foam finger of Eastern "freedom" straight at the Western allies, accusing them of all sorts of horribly unfree things like slavery and colonialism.