Text: We will bury you!

Year: 1962.

Publisher: Bourns, Inc.

Artist: NA.

Additional information: Booklet produced by Bourns, Inc., an electronics company, in 1962. The booklet claims to expose ‘the communist blueprint for conquest and domination’ and states its purpose is, in the words of the company’s president Marlan E. Bourns, ‘to alert Americans of the Communist criminal conspiracy and to stimulate them to additional study of this vital topic’. The title is a Nikita Khrushchev quote, spoken to Western diplomats in Moscow in November 1956: ‘Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!’ Several diplomats left the room in protest, and the phrase sparked outrage in many western countries, especially in the US where the quote was widely reprinted in anti-communist propaganda. Khrushchev later clarified: ‘I have already said that the words “We will bury capitalism” should not be taken literally, as is done by ordinary gravediggers who carry a spade and dig graves and bury the dead. What I had in mind was the outlook for the development of human society. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism.’