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“We Will Bury You” — How A Mistranslation Almost Started WW3
And the story of the man behind those fateful words
On November 18th, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev uttered the words that would set relations between the Soviet Union and the United States back a decade. At the Polish embassy in Moscow, to a room full of western diplomats, he proclaimed “we will bury you”.
Several NATO member nation envoys and the Israeli envoy left the room in protest and across the world, the spectre of nuclear war seemed to loom larger, while the doomsday clock ticked away ominously in the background. What many didn’t know at the time though was that “we will bury you” was, at best a misinterpretation, and at worst a complete mistranslation.
The Mouthpiece of Soviet leaders
Viktor Sukhodrev, often dubbed the king of interpreters, is largely the man responsible for the words “we will bury you”. The Russian to English interpreter for Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev, Sukhodrev was raised in London and his fluent grasp of English would see him become the mouthpiece of Soviet leaders on the world stage.
