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- Demonstration performances: five speeches from the UN rostrum that have gone down in history
Demonstration performances: five speeches from the UN rostrum that have gone down in history
Every September, New York becomes a city of high diplomacy for a few days. Cordons are being erected around the UN headquarters, black cars with diplomatic plates are lining up along First Avenue, streets are being blocked, and protesters with placards are coming out. This year was no exception. On September 22, world leaders and their representatives gather in the city again. For the layman, meetings of the UN General Assembly are a series of reports written in bureaucratic language. Most of the speeches that are heard these days remain only in transcripts. But there are exceptions that are forever inscribed in the history of the organization.
Over the past eight decades, the venue has repeatedly transformed from a place for protocol performances into a stage for political performance. Here, the leaders competed not only in arguments, but also in speech length, gestures, and intonation. On the eve of the 81st session of the General Assembly, "Izvestia" collected the most striking speeches that show how international diplomacy gradually changed tools and adapted to new media formats.
The young Castro and his record
In September 1960, 34-year-old Fidel Castro arrived at the UN headquarters. A little less than two years have passed since the victory of the Cuban Revolution. It was a visit that American intelligence agencies and the press were waiting for with barely concealed horror. And Castro fully met their expectations.
His trip has become a New York legend. Initially, the delegation stayed at the Shelburne Hotel on Lexington Avenue. However, the hotel administration allegedly demanded a huge deposit from the Cubans for the safety of their property. Insulted, Castro threatened to set up a tent camp right in Central Park. As a result, the Cuban delegation defiantly moved to Harlem — to the Theresa Hotel. Nikita Khrushchev later visited him there.
Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro. The year 1960
But the highlight of the program was his speech. Castro took the podium on September 26. The General Assembly usually recommends that delegates limit their speeches to 15 minutes. The Cuban Prime Minister stayed at microphone 269 for four hours and 29 minutes. The UN calls this the longest officially recorded speech in the history of the General Assembly.
Castro spoke about American policy towards Cuba, imperialism, colonialism and the situation of Latin American countries. But it wasn't the topic of his speech itself that was more important. Only the Cuban leader who came to power received the same podium as the heads of the major powers. It was a political message: yesterday's partisans can act on a par with the leaders of the superpowers.
Khrushchev's Shoe
If Castro used the time, Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 attracted attention with a gesture.
On October 12, the issue of granting independence to colonial countries and peoples was discussed at a meeting of the General Assembly. The representative of the Philippines, Lorenzo Sumulong, spoke. He criticized Soviet policy in Eastern Europe. Then one of the most famous stories of the Cold War happened: the Soviet leader allegedly took off his shoe and began banging it on the table, demanding an end to anti-Soviet propaganda.
It wasn't easy with the shoe. According to American sources based on a report by The New York Times, Khrushchev took off his right shoe, lifted it towards Sumulong, and then hit it on the table. During the subsequent speech by the American representative, he again took off his shoe and defiantly waved it.
Photographers and cartoonists instantly turned this gesture into a symbol of the "unpredictable Soviet threat." Khrushchev's shoe became a metaphor for the Cold War.
The story got an equally spectacular sequel: the meeting eventually became so noisy that the Chairman of the General Assembly, Frederick Boland, hit the table with a hammer with such force that the head of the hammer flew off. After that, the debate had to be suspended.
The topic of that meeting remained only in the minutes, and the symbolic shoe continues to be discussed to this day.
The Olive Branch and Arafat's weapon
In 1974, a man who represented not a State, but the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) spoke at the rostrum of the General Assembly.
By this time, the issue of the international status of the PLO was already in the spotlight of the General Assembly. On October 14, it adopted resolution 3210, inviting the PLO to participate in the plenary discussions on the Palestinian issue. On November 13, the chairman of the organization's Executive Committee, Yasser Arafat, in a military uniform and a holster hanging from his belt (they are still debating whether there were weapons there), delivered a speech built around one image.
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO organization Yasser Arafat
"Today I came carrying an olive branch and a freedom fighter's weapon. Don't let the olive branch fall out of my hand," Arafat said. These words have been preserved in the official transcript of the General Assembly.
This metaphor has become part of the changing international status of the Palestinian movement. A few days later, on November 22, the General Assembly adopted resolution 3237 and granted the PLO observer status at the UN, and the olive branch became a recognizable symbol of Palestinian diplomacy.
Hugo Chavez: "It still smells of sulfur here"
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke at the UN General Assembly in September 2006, the day after American leader George W. Bush. He raised the book "Hegemony or Survival" by the American political scientist Noam Chomsky over his head, crossed himself and said: "The devil was here yesterday. And it still smells of sulfur here."
The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. The year 2006
He understood the mechanism perfectly: unlike Fidel Castro, he spoke in the era of television and the Internet — his speech would be parsed into quotations, which meant that phrases should be etched into memory. Chavez made the most of the stage: he showed solidarity with the whole of Latin America, gave a signal to Washington and attracted the attention of millions of viewers.
A red line and a painted bomb
On September 27, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the General Assembly with unusual props.
It was a large piece of paper with a bomb painted on it. The poster outlined the stages that, according to Netanyahu's interpretation, Iran was going through on its way to potentially developing nuclear weapons. Then the prime minister took out a red marker, drew a line and explained to the audience where, according to Israel, the border should be located, which Iran should not cross.
Netanyahu used the image of the bomb to show the three stages of uranium enrichment, and marked with a red line the threshold he considered critical.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The year 2012
The Israeli leader has shown that in the age of television, diplomacy works best when its arguments can be explained literally on the fingers, in this case, on an almost cartoon drawing. A complex discussion about the nuclear program, requiring IAEA reports, tables, and complex estimates, turned into a drawing on a piece of paper for a few minutes. The photo of Netanyahu on the podium became the opening of the next day's issue for many world media.
In addition to the main topics of discussion, the balance of power and other changes, the nature of speeches at the rostrum of the UN General Assembly is also changing. If earlier, in order to be remembered, hour-long speeches were needed, later demonstrative gestures, metaphors, now a drawing is enough. As a rule, speeches delivered at the UN General Assembly are lost in transcripts, and they live for exactly the minutes they are being delivered. But there are also those who have recorded themselves in the history of the United Nations. I wonder how the 81st UN General Assembly will be remembered.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
