We will bury you

Nikita Khrushchev, 1961

"We will bury you!" (Russian: "Мы вас похороним!", transliterated as My vas pokhoronim!) is a phrase that was used by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18, 1956.^[1]^[2]^[3] The phrase was originally translated into English by Khrushchev's personal interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev.^[4]

History 1
Borrowings of the phrase 2
See also 3
References 4
External links 5

History

The actual verbal context was: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in" ("Нравится вам или нет, но история на нашей стороне. Мы вас закопаем"). In his subsequent public speech Khrushchev declared: "[...] We must take a shovel and dig a deep grave, and bury colonialism as deep as we can".^[5] Later, on August 24, 1963, Khrushchev remarked in his speech in Yugoslavia, "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,"^[6] a reference to the Marxist saying, "The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism", based on the concluding statement in Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto: "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." Khrushchev repeated this Marxist thesis at a meeting with journalists in the US in September 1959. Many Americans interpreted the quote as a nuclear threat.^[7]

Some authors suggest that an alternate translation is "We shall be present at your funeral" or "We shall outlive you".^[8]^[9]^[10] Perhaps the closest translation into English in terms of sentiment would be the phrase, "It's your funeral."

Mikhail Gorbachev suggested in his book Perestroika and New Thinking for our Country and the World that the image used by Khrushchev was inspired by the acute discussions among Soviet agrarian scientists in the 1930s, nicknamed "who will dig whom in", the bitterness of which must be understood in the political context of the times.

Borrowings of the phrase

Khrushchev's phrase was used as the title of Jan Šejna's book on communist Cold War strategies and of a comics book. The phrase also appears in Sting's song "Russians". The quote, paraphrased as "We will bury them!", was used as a taunt in the video game Red Alert 2, in which the Soviet Union wages World War III against the Western Allies.

References

^ "We Will Bury You!", Time Magazine, November 26, 1956
^ "Khrushchev Tirade Again Irks Envoys", The New York Times, Nov. 19, 1956, p. 1.
^ The quote, cited on Bartleby.com and QuotationsPage.com.
^ Умер личный переводчик Хрущева и Брежнева Виктор Суходрев (in Russian).
^ Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Sergeĭ Khrushchev, George Shriver, Stephen Shenfield. Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Statesman, 1953-1964, Penn State Press, 2007, p. 893
^ Nikita Khrushchev on QuotationsPage.com
^ James Stuart Olson, Historical dictionary of the 1950s, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000, p. 157
^ Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century
^ Bill Swainson, The Encarta Book of Quotations
^ Robert Legvold, Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century and the Shadow of the Past

External links

Comments by Stephen Pearl, Chief of the English Interpretation Section of the U.N. in New York from 1980 to 1994. (On Internet Archive.)

Cold War

USA USSR ANZUS NATO Non-Aligned Movement SEATO Warsaw Pact

1940s	Dekemvriana Yalta Conference Operation Unthinkable Potsdam Conference Gouzenko Affair Operation Masterdom Operation Beleaguer Operation Blacklist Forty Iran crisis of 1946 Greek Civil War Corfu Channel incident Turkish Straits crisis Restatement of Policy on Germany First Indochina War Truman Doctrine Asian Relations Conference Marshall Plan 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Tito–Stalin Split Berlin Blockade Western betrayal Iron Curtain Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Chinese Civil War (Second round) Malayan Emergency

1950s	Bamboo Curtain Korean War 1953 Iranian coup d'état Uprising of 1953 in East Germany 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Partition of Vietnam First Taiwan Strait Crisis Geneva Summit (1955) Poznań 1956 protests Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Suez Crisis Syrian Crisis of 1957 Sputnik crisis Second Taiwan Strait Crisis Cuban Revolution Kitchen Debate Bandung Conference Bricker Amendment McCarthyism Operation Gladio Iraqi July Revolution "We will bury you"

1960s	Congo Crisis Sino-Soviet split 1960 U-2 incident Bay of Pigs Invasion 1960 Turkish coup d'état Soviet–Albanian split Berlin Wall Portuguese Colonial War (Angolan War of Independence Guinea-Bissau War of Independence Mozambican War of Independence) Cuban Missile Crisis Sino-Indian War Sarawak Communist Insurgency Iraqi Ramadan Revolution 1963 Syrian coup d'état Vietnam War 1964 Brazilian coup d'état United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1965–66) South African Border War Transition to the New Order Domino theory ASEAN Declaration Laotian Civil War 1966 Syrian coup d'état Argentine Revolution Korean DMZ Conflict Greek military junta of 1967–74 USS Pueblo incident Six-Day War War of Attrition Cultural Revolution Prague Spring Malaysia Communist Insurgency War Invasion of Czechoslovakia Iraqi Ba'athist Revolution Goulash Communism Sino-Soviet border conflict Communist insurgency in the Philippines Corrective Move

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We will bury you

We will bury you

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History

Borrowings of the phrase

See also

References

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