Having been brought up in the 1950s and 60s during what was known as the Cold War, I find it a bit sad that after all the ensuing decades nothing seems to have changed. Russia and the West are at it again, still calling one another names. But as long as it remains name-calling we'll take that.
As a child I recall grainy newsreels of mighty May Day parades on Red Square, with the politburo waving to all those soldiers, tanks and a seemingly never-ending procession of fearsome-looking missiles. Things seemed a lot simpler in those days to us schoolboys. There was the enormous red empire of the Soviet Union (USSR) who were the bad guys. Then there was the West, the good guys. Quite straightforward really. In the USSR everyone ate borscht and military choirs sang boating songs. In the West it was burgers, the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
One of my earliest memories was a newsreel of Khrushchev visiting Oxford in 1956 during a trip to England. I recall asking my father why the university students were singing "Poor old Joe" and he explained that it was a reference to former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who Khrushchev had denounced earlier that year. My next lasting image is of that bizarre 1960 UN General Assembly session in which a furious Khrushchev waved his fists and banged his shoe in anger. Now that was fun.
