Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev famously used an expression generally translated into English as "We will bury you!" ("Мы вас похороним!", or "My vas pokhoronim!") while addressing Western ambassadors at reception in Moscow in November, 1956. [1], [2] The translation has been controversial: the original Russian phrase may as easily mean "we will outlast you" as the more belligerent sense suggested by the English translation.

Several online sources incorrectly claim that he made this statement at the United Nations General Assembly on October 12, 1960, when he famously pounded the table with his shoe (or with an extra shoe he had brought with him explicitly for that purpose).

Speaking some years later in Yugoslavia, Khrushchev himself remarked, "I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you." [3], a nod to the popular Marxist saying, "The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism".

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• Comments by Stephen Pearl, Chief of the English Interpretation Section of the U.N. in New York from 1980 to 1994