### Kitchen Debate **Date**: July 24, 1959 • **Location**: Sokol’niki, Russian Federation Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. vice president Richard Nixon held an impromptu debate (pictured) at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. As leader of the Soviet Union, he shocked the world by denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin, embarking on a campaign of de-Stalinization, and presiding over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

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