On October 12, 1960, there took place the stormiest session of the United Nations General Assembly. Khrushchev took off one of the light boots he was wearing and began to bang it on the table. He banged to a regular rhythm, like the pendulum of a metronome. That was the moment that entered world history as Khrushchev’s famous shoe. The conference hall of the United Nations had never seen its like before. A sensation was born right before my eyes.¹

“Our delegation and the delegates of other socialist countries made a lot of noise and stamped their feet, although some were smiling. Obviously they didn’t take seriously this nonparliamentary method of discussion. Remembering reports I had read about the sessions of the State Duma in Russia, I decided to add a little more heat. I took off my shoe and pounded on the desk so that our protest would be louder. This provoked a storm among the journalists and photographers. Our friends made a lot of jokes about it afterward. When Nehru met with me later, he remarked that maybe we shouldn’t have behaved that way—or that I personally should not have. I understood Nehru. He was pursuing a policy of neutrality, taking an intermediate position between the capitalist and socialist countries, and he wanted to play the role of some sort of connecting bridge, but his personal sympathies were predominantly in favor of our policy of peaceful coexistence and the struggle to preserve peace in the world.”

The most celebrated incident of all, the famous shoe banging, took place on Khrushchev's last full day in New York. A Philippine delegate turned the issue of decolonization against Moscow by charging that Eastern Europe had been "deprived of political and civil rights" and "swallowed up by the Soviet Union." After drumming on the table with both fists, the red-faced Soviet leader took off his right shoe (a loafer/sandal, according to his son, because he couldn't stand tying laces), waved it threateningly, and then banged it on the table, louder and louder, until everyone in the hall was watching and buzzing. ² […] Khrushchev was delighted with his own performance. Learning that Troyanovsky had missed it, he told him, "Oh, you really missed something! It was such fun! The UN is a sort of parliament, you know, where the minority has to make itself heard one way or another. [...] At the Soviet Mission after the session, according to Shevchenko, "everyone was embarrassed and upset." The usually strict and impeccable Gromyko was "white-lipped with agitation. But Khrushchev acted as if nothing at all had happened. He was laughing loudly and joking. He said it had been necessary to 'inject a little life into the stuffy atmosphere of the U.N.' "³ […] That evening, the Hungarian leader János Kádár, known for his wry humor, found a delicate way to convey his displeasure during dinner with Khrushchev: "Comrade Khrushchev, remember shortly after banging your shoe you went up to the rostrum to make a point of order? Well at that moment our foreign minister, Comrade Sik, turned to me and said, 'Do you think he had time to put his shoe on, or did he go barefoot?'" Troyanovsky wrote: "Many of those sitting at the table started snickering. I had the feeling that at that moment our leader realized that he may have gone too far."⁴

[...]

"What can we do to help the new administration?" Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov asked [the new] Kennedy advisers Walt Rostow and Jerome Wiesner, who were attending a meeting on disarmament in Moscow in late November 1960. Rostow could foresee a possible New York summit if the American fliers downed during the summer were released, if a test ban accord were reached, and if this time Khrushchev came to Manhattan "wearing his shoes."

Edited by Sergei Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev; vol. 3, STATESMAN [1953-1964] (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), pp. 269+892

William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (W. W. Norton & Company, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003), pp.476-477+486

See also: Alessandro Iandolo, ‘Beyond the Shoe: Rethinking Khrushchev at the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly’, Diplomatic History, 41:1 (May 20, 2016), pp.128– 154