Xruščev and 1959. Contesting Consumption in the Cold War

Abstract

This article investigates an important battle-front of the Cold War: the competition on consumption. It focuses on the year 1959, year of the Soviet exhibition in New York, of the American exhibition in Moscow and of Xruščev’s trip to the U.S., considering the Soviet attempts to develop alternative models of modernity. The “consumption contest” is here analyzed with a particular emphasis on the Soviet culture of consumption in its differences with the American one. The paper uses both official and popular Soviet sources as well as the American press when this helps to clarify the difference between Soviet and American propaganda attitudes, as well as archival documents from the RGAE (Russian State Archive of the Economy). As far as the popular press is concerned, here we have mostly used the Soviet weekly magazine “Ogonek” and the monthly “L’Union Soviétique”. As regards popular American sources, the article takes into consideration the “Ogonek” counterpart “Life”.