Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 17th, 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev arrived in New York City,

where he attended a dinner hosted by the Economic Club of New York. This was a big deal, the Soviet leader on a tour of the

United States. There were a number of protests along the way. So let's talk about Khrushchev's

visit to the United States where he did, among other things things give a big speech at the United Nations.

Here as always is Nicole Hemmer of Columbia.

Hello Nicky.

Hey Jody.

And I will say we've been doing this show for a while.

We just passed 50 I noticed we

might not be closer to 60 but anyway congratulations happy 50th show is this our

first time talking kind of explicitly about US-Russia Cold War relations?

I think that it is, which is kind of surprising given how large they loomed in the US in this period.

I mean we missed Bay pigs, we missed the fall of Berlin Wall. Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of history out there.

Anyway, I'm glad we're talking about it now and I do want to talk about the big important stuff here, but I also just kind of want to talk about one of the things that struck me the most about this story, which is just his itinerary when Cruciff comes to the United States, I mean he really like hits all of the spots that you would think you would hit if you're just like,

I want to see what the United States is around. He eats a hot dog. He goes to a fair.

He goes to California. Does he go to Disneyland? Did I read that correctly?

So he wanted to go to Disneyland. He spends a day sort of hobnobbing with people in

Hollywood. He goes behind the scenes at a show that's being put up. But then they'd invited him to Disneyland and said that at the

last minute that they couldn't keep him safe so for security reasons he couldn't

go and he threw a fit. This man wanted to see Disneyland and was denied and he was pissed.

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