The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York starting this week. Fifty years ago, the Assembly almost didn’t meet at all.

A dispute over the Soviet Union’s failure to pay its $52.6 million share of bills for peacekeeping operations in the Congo and the Middle East delayed the start of the 1964 session until December, after the United States threatened to invoke a U.N. rule barring countries whose payments were more than two years in arrears from voting in the Assembly.

The dispute dragged on for months, with the Assembly convening to hear speeches but not taking any votes at all. It wasn’t until the next summer that the Soviets agreed to make “voluntary contributions” and the other big powers agreed to let normal voting procedures resume.