Cold War rivals' kitchen clash

Slides
Photos

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-24 08:59

MOSCOW: One of the Cold War's fiercest clashes took place 50 years ago this month, but instead of a conflict in Africa or Asia, the battle of US and Soviet might unfolded in a model kitchen.

The so-called "kitchen debate" erupted on July 24, 1959, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and US vice president Richard Nixon got into an impromptu argument about the merits of their countries' economic systems.

The two men held their debate amid washing machines, gas stoves and other US consumer goods brought to Moscow for the American National Exhibition, an event that gave many Russians their first glimpse of life in the West.

Half a century later, witnesses recalled how the exhibition changed their lives - and how the revelation of US affluence dealt a blow to the Soviet Union's foundations.

"It was something of a shock," said Eduard Ivanian, a former official in the Soviet Culture Ministry who helped bring the 1959 exhibition to Moscow. "The exhibition did not show extraordinary technical achievements or things that stunned the imagination. It showed kitchens, washing machines, gas stoves. And all these things were ordinary things for Americans," Ivanian said.

Some 2.7 million people visited the exhibition during its six-week run from July to August 1959 to gawk at products like Chevrolet cars, Polaroid cameras and Pepsi, three million cups of which were consumed at the fair.

The sprawling fair at Sokolniki park in northeast Moscow opened thanks to a US-Soviet deal in which the superpowers agreed to host duelling exhibitions to showcase their achievements.

But the corresponding Soviet exhibition in New York that year was largely greeted with yawns by Americans, who perhaps had better things to do than examine models of a Soviet passenger jet, Sputnik and a collective farm.

The famed kitchen debate, on the opening day of the American exhibition, began in a television studio and continued as Nixon led Khrushchev to a model American home, surrounded by a swarm of journalists, aides and translators.

Nixon - a future US president - played tour guide and acted as diplomatically as possible while the earthly Khrushchev scoffed and insisted that Soviet housewares were just as good as American ones.

"I want to show you this kitchen. It is like those of our houses in California," Nixon said, according to comments later published in US newspapers.

Pointing to a dishwasher, Nixon said: "This is our newest model. This is the kind, which is built in thousands of units for direct installations in the houses. In America, we like to make life easier for women."

"We have such things," Khrushchev said. A majority of Soviet households did not even have refrigerators at the time.

The debate pointed to a flaw in the Soviet command economy. Though the system could build rockets and atomic bombs, it failed to provide its citizens with many of the consumer goods they wanted. Food shortages, queues and endless waits for products like cars became a recurring problem. The Soviet Union ultimately collapsed in 1991.

AFP