Yet this was no casual debate. And this exchange of ideas occurred in no ordinary place or time. The kitchen in which the two powerful men met was a model exhibition located in the U.S. Trade and Cultural Fair in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park, and the time was the Cold War. The two men, meeting that day for the first time, leaned on the railing in front of the model General Electric kitchen, and through interpreters debated capitalism and communism by referencing not only nuclear weapons but washing machines. The two leaders had already been arguing that day about these issues, meeting first in the Premier’s office and then touring the American National Exhibition. It was the photographic image of the two leaders at that model kitchen that became the iconic symbol of this impromptu “Kitchen Debate.” In fact, the debate took place in several venues and lasted five hours. Captured in news photographs, recorded in part in the Exhibition’s RCA studios, and televised on the American networks NBC and ABC, the event crystallized the two nations’ ideologies and attitudes. An estimated seventy-two million Americans viewed the 18-minute tape smuggled out of the USSR the next day. At one and the same time news and propaganda, the Kitchen Debate unmasked polite diplomacy and revealed the implications of the Cold War on each nation’s security and way of life. Occurring between the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the U-2 Crisis of 1960, the Kitchen Debate serves as a key moment in USSR-US relations during the Cold War. In
commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kitchen Debate, we seek to
explore the event itself, its contemporary international contexts and
reception, and its historical and cultural significance, by exploring domestic material culture and design. This is an ongoing research project undertaken by Professor Eric J. Sandeen, University of Wyoming, and Professor Shirley T. Wajda, Kent State University, with their students. |
