American History Hit - Nixon in Moscow: The Kitchen Debate

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev. Leading figures of the United States and the Soviet Union respectively, in a verbal debate about capitalism and communism in the 1950s. The location? A cultural convention.On July 24 1959, this pair of key players in the Cold War met at the American National Exhibition in Moscow. Their conversation was televised on all new colour television. This 'Kitchen Debate' became one of the most famous episodes of the Cold War.Kitchen Debate newsreel: Richard Nixon Foundation. Originally recorded July 24 1959.Edited and produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribeYou can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Tractors over there, houseware is over here. There's a bubble lamp even, and someone mentioned a lemon squeezer that automatically filters the pulp. This is Moscow, 1959, and we're at the American National Exhibition in Sulkenigi Park. Everyone here is young and fresh-faced, displaying innovations designed to improve American lives. Among them, two middle-aged men from different worlds, Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, and Vice President Richard Nixon from the United States, are discussing the advantages of capitalism in the West and communism in the East, in the company of a press corps hanging on their every word. It's a seemingly friendly debate that tries to put a good face on an ever-darkening conflict.

Hey, everybody, it's Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Nice to have you. Early summer, 1959, was a rare moment of relaxed tensions during an otherwise fraught Cold War period. We were nearing the end of the two-term presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who'd overseen an economic boom in the nation, while navigating the challenging issues of civil rights and new confrontations internationally. The Soviets, for their part, were enjoying a public relations triumph with their resounding successes in space, having launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, followed by a series of rocket-techurchase. technologies far superior to what the U.S. had achieved. In this phase of diplomatic opportunity, a calm before the storm, if ever there was, the decision was made to hold a cultural exhibition

exchange, designed to promote cultural understanding between Americans and Russians, allowing each nation to showcase their consumer goods produced by their industries and people. The Soviet National Exhibition opened in June 1959 at the Coliseum in New York City. The American National Exhibition opened the following month in the Soviet Capitol. It was there in Moscow, in July, 1959, that Vice President Richard Nixon opened this exhibition in Solkoneki Park, inviting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as his personal guest. It would prove to be an unusually intimate moment of face-to-face contact between high-ranking Soviet and American officials, in what had been until then a dangerously impersonal and distant standoff between nuclear

superpowers. Even better, it was all caught on camera by that brand new American technology color television. This public-facing dialogue about consumer goods and industrial production veered towards more of a political and economic sparring session, which eventually came to be known as the kitchen debate. Justin Nordstrom is an author and professor of history at Penn State University who has made food history his specialty. Greetings, Justin, great to have you at the table. Thanks, Don. Thanks for having me. I mentioned this moment as a period of relative calm, you know, in the middle of the Cold War. Is that an overstatement?

What's going on at this moment in Soviet-American relations? I think there's a mixture of apprehension and a feeling of inferiority, especially in the part of the United States. Remember, the Soviets had launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit two years before the kitchen debates. And so when Nixon arrives in Moscow in 1959, he really wants to use this huge pavilion and explosion of American consumer goods as a counterweight, as a way of showcasing what America has to offer to offset some of these shortcomings in the space race and the nuclear arms race. One of the realities that many people forget these days is that Berlin existed. The whole of Berlin sits in the middle of East. Germany and is very divided at this point. It's really our stake in the ground in what is the Soviet Empire at that point. The split is a big problem and very soon coming is the Berlin Wall, which

goes up in 1961. I'm curious if you think how conscious, at least Nixon was and the Americans in general of what was at stake at this moment. Never mind the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Right. Well, you're right to say the Berlin Wall is in the future, but the Berlin blockade that had occurred in the 1940s. And that was really a symbol of one of Cruzchev's predecessors, Stalin's staking out and threatening the West, America and its Western European allies, as if to say, look what power I have, look how vulnerable you are to you. Ironically, West Berlin, this kind of oasis of capitalist influence,

was also the opposite. It was a symbol of Western resilience, especially with the Berlin airlift. in the 1940s. So I think that's a good expression, Don, of what was its stake in Moscow the following decade? Yes, on one hand, this kitchen debate in 1959 is a symbol of detente, a kind of maybe cooling of Cold War tensions, but it's also a kind of saber-rattling expression of our standard of living, our economic ideology is superior to yours. And so while it's, I think, tempting to maybe dismiss this event as, just political posturing between Nixon and Christian. There's also a great deal at stake. And interestingly, both leaders will say in their later

memoirs that this event was crucial, that they remember it years later, and that they saw it as a way to express to the world why their ideology, capitalism, or communism was superior. So there is a lot at stake, even in what seems just like a photo up. I'm going to go off my questions here. I just jump to something that really, really bothers me about this stuff. You see in these television clips two human beings who are actually having a pretty good time talking to each other. I mean, trying to figure it out.

I mean, they're definitely different personalities, and they're certainly aware of an inner agenda to all of this. But there's right on the surface that which most human beings feel. or felt at that time. Why are we not just talking to each other? Why don't we just get along? What the heck is happening here that this has become so overblown

this whole face-off on the planet between these things? You have to think that there were other people watching this, like military minds were like, hey, this is too much exposure. We're having to do good a time here. Yeah, but the content, I mean, on one hand, yes, two people are sitting down,

they're talking about their differences, and that should be encouraging to people that want to avoid a nuclear crisis. Yes. But the content of what they're saying is maybe less friendly than the cameras would lead you to belief. You know, when Khrushchev is basically saying we've surpassed you, we've gone past you, and we have everything that you have and soon will be taken to lead. I mean, these are things that could be interpreted as threatening or at least argumentative. But the spirit of it, especially from Khrushchev, is, almost playful. I mean, there's nothing wrong with saying, we're so good and we're going to

be good and we're going to say goodbye to you. But, you know, all that stuff is said in a kind of jovial fashion that is not as threatening as it seems in history, you know, when you really watch them. Yeah, it's certainly compared to things like the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s or the proxy wars in places like Korea or South America. You're exactly right. And later in Nixon's career and maybe inspired by some of these conversations, he's going to be part of the Salt Treaties, the Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaties when he's president. So yeah, you're right to say that compared to other Cold War expressions, that this is true. And again, it seems like I'm equivocating here, but there is that same one-upmanship, that same spirit of, look, the Cold War,

even though there are certainly military aspects to it, it really is a war of ideas and ideologies. And that's what you see on display here. There's a picture, you know, famous picture where you see Khrushchev and Richard Nixon next to the dryer or the washing machine, whatever. There's a woman in the picture. Just behind him is Leonid Brezhnev, you know, who is so serious all the time and such a bore, really. And there he is like representing the future dismally for the Soviets, whereas at least Khrushchev had some personality.

Yeah, this is where the phrase Kitchen Debates comes from is that famous picture. It's not just one day. This is a several days long series of arguments and debates, but that photo crystallizes the American National Exposition and gives this event its name. What I find ironic about this picture is, Don, let's be honest, you've got two older men who probably don't spend a lot of time cooking in a kitchen, debating the merits of capitalism and communism from the perspective of housewives. And when Nixon says, we want to make life easier for our women, Khrushchev retorts, you know, your capitalist ideas towards women don't interest us. This is a little bit like mansplaining domesticity at the height of the Cold War. And I think this is the irony in what

I said at the beginning, because, you know, Nixon realizes, look, I can't compete on the topic of space exploration. And the Soviets have caught up to us in terms of nuclear weapons testing. But But where we Americans shine is we make tastier food and we have fancier kitchen gadgets. So that's clearly his agenda in this debate. The idea of this thing was that one man would talk to the other about how great their countries were. It was unexpected that they would get into such a tangle, wasn't it? Exactly right. I don't think Nixon intended this.

You're right to say that cruise ship has a lot of personality. But in other contexts, that personality is very different. You know, in what could be a mistranslation, when speaking to Western diplomats, Khrushchev will famously say, we will bury him, meaning that the forces of communism, history is on our side and the forces of communism will bury Western capitalism. So in other context, he's much more antagonistic. And so this is a moment of maybe levity, but also with some real stakes attached to it in terms of talking about standard of living. One irony, ironically, is that Khrushchev is similar to Nixon. To paraphrase some of what he says, he says, look, you can't put Marxism into your clothing or into your soup. You know, he says, you can't eat ideology. So what's interesting is that both see raising the standard of living for their respective countries as crucial to their position in the world and their dominance in the Cold War.

You can really go on a rabbit hole dive with this. There's a lot on YouTube and so forth about a cruise Jeff's trip that he later takes to the United States, which is a big, big journey. I'm pulling on a bit of that as I'm expressing here because he really does that Gorbachev thing later on. He sees America, he goes to Los Angeles, San Francisco. He goes on a whole national tour, which really surprised me how in-depth it was. And the whole time he has this, I'm sure it's propaganda, of course, but he genuinely seems to want to reach out and meet the American people. Maybe his agenda is to show that communism is a friendly face and maybe you guys should consider it. His biggest disappointment is he doesn't get to see Disney World.

They say it's for security reasons. I'm not sure I'm buying that, but he really wants to go there. He's really mad about it. He doesn't have a good time in LA at all. Interestingly, he visits a lot of American farms during that trip and one historian, Shane Hamilton, has talked about not the arms race, but the farms race as crucial. This is going to be an embarrassment to the Soviets. in the Cold War when they have to import American grain because they can't feed their own people. And Christop really has this interest. And it's part of what's on display in 1959 as well.

Look at how much stuff we have. And Americans will ship to the Soviet Union for this one exposition, seven tons of food and like 110 varieties of products. Not just food, but like what we would today consider convenience items, frozen meal, juice concentrates, cake mixes. It's all described in this outpouring of American abundance. And that's what Khrushchev sees when he comes here, but that's also what the U.S. Information Agency that organizes the exposition. That's also what they send to the Soviet Union.

Look at all the cars we have. Look at all the factory equipment we have. And especially look at all these appliances and all of this food. Look at all this American processed food. What a triumph, huh? What do the Soviets think of all that? That's hard to gauge. One of the people that goes to Moscow and works as an aide, she's trained in Russian, she goes as an aide, and then goes on to a career in academia. She writes about this and she says, there were mixed reactions. One Soviet visitor said, this is more like a habadashery, more like a kind of store. And interestingly, the Soviets, they present their own exposition the year before. in 1958 at Madison Square Garden in New York. And theirs is much more scientifically focused. And that's what they had expected to see Soviet visitors.

Three million of them come to the exposition. One of them said afterwards, I left with visions of glittering metal sauce pans in my head. And so clearly the idea of American abundance takes hold, but it doesn't always have the same reaction. In particular, because of some wrangling, the Soviets are not able to eat all of this food that Americans prepare. They get to see all these things and smell the

delicious desserts and cakes, but they don't get to eat it. And so one of the guides would write later, look, we just had to eat it all ourselves, which must have been a disappointment. I'm James Patton Rogers, a war historian, advisor to the UN and NATO, and host of the warfare podcast from History Hit. Join me twice a week every week as we look at the conflicts that have defined our past and the one shaping our future. We talked to award-winning journalists. ISIS, this peculiar strain that we all came to know very well in the mid-2010s, really got it start because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

We hear from the people who were actually there. The Sudanese have been incredible. They have managed to get supplies to people, to individuals who are suffering. And we learn from the remarkable historians shining a light on Forgottenham. modern histories. For the most part, the millions of people who were taken to those camps were immediately murdered. Auschwitz combined the functions of death camp and concentration camp and slave labor. Join us on the warfare podcast for a history hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. You're a food historian, Justin, and I'm a guy who grew up in the

60s and 70s. How much was it intended that we really would become a culture that would depend on canned food? and frozen food. Was it a real vision that that was going to fix American lives and sort of empower the middle class? Sure, absolutely. This is not an accident. And in fact, Don, one of your previous guests in that History of American Five Foods episode talked about that specifically and it's written about canned foods. You're exactly right. Before World War II, frozen foods were luxury items, not unheard of, but rare in American supermarkets. in an American kitchens. And one of the big transformation that happens when there's a demobilization and the same companies that have been turning out material for World War II now have to convert

to marketing to customers. And so a lot of the products that had been aimed at the military are now kind of refocused. And so many of the items that you and I see in our grocery stores today were first brought to the military and then kind of transformed. That's especially true of frozen foods. There's a huge history here of how retailers change over the way supermarkets work. They have more space dedicated to frozen meals. Americans buy more and larger freezers for their homes. Even today, in the 21st century, Americans have the biggest freezers in the world. And of course, one of the other hallmarks of the Cold War is the interstate highway system and the growth of the suburbs. So Americans have bigger homes, larger homes, larger families to feed. And Nixon is not entirely

wrong to say that one of the major marketing coups was convincing American eaters and American shoppers that this is going to make your lives better, these cake mixes, these frozen items. And the hallmark, maybe the quintessential item, is the TV dinner, the Swanson TV dinner, which goes into mainstream production. There had been some prototypes earlier, but in the decade that Nixon is talked about in the 1950s. It's a big conversation we're going to have some time, I think, because I want to know what Nixon is proposing as this whole dream

of an American egalitarian society, largely based on the availability of food, is still evident in the supermarkets. And it wouldn't be there if it wasn't getting bought. What he was predicting about America comes true, doesn't it? I do think so. There is a kind of maybe a pushback against some of this reliance on convenience foods. That's going to happen in later decades. But Nixon's not wrong. And a lot of the ways that journalists are writing about food in the kitchen debate in the 1950s is in classic cloak and dagger terms. One newspaper talked about top secret agents infiltrating the Soviet Union with a secret technological. weapon, but they're not talking about nuclear warheads. They're talking about brownie mix.

You know, like this is what's going to win over our Cold War adversaries. And this happens not only with subsequent historians, but even at the time, Americans really followed this event. And Time magazine writes about this, talks about Nixon issuing a retort to Soviet propaganda, and one newspaper published recipes that would be highlighted at the exposition. you can eat the food, they said, the way that we're serving it to our Soviet rivals. And these featured things like, you know, heat and eat vegetable, a pie, a kind of like pot pie with beef in it, a kind of strawberry cake mix that you just mix it up and it's ready to serve. And so I almost imagine Americans, this was a Minnesota newspaper, back home, making the same food

that was served half a world away to inspire the Soviet Union. So you're exactly right. This was the classic idea of Americanism. It's the same thing as with the space program. You know, all that food, I remember drinking the tang and eating those space sticks that were so exciting to us when we were young. There was a whole new world that was going to come through the industrialization of food, only for my mother to have to completely unpack the whole thing and do a U-turn and get back to vegetables and stuff. I remember her. But that's a whole James Beard conversation.

We're dying to have one day, one day. Who wins this debate? It depends on who you ask. I think both sides claim victory in the kitchen debate. Khrushchev is able to say, I showed those Americans. And Nixon, as you pointed out earlier, Don, uses this as a springboard towards the presidency when he campaigns in 1960. And so this is one of those unclear outcomes.

And both sides will say that they presented their case. And I mean, for Nixon, this builds on a long career of anti-communism. He gets his start in Congress in the Alcher his case, exposing a communist spy. And when he campaigns against Kennedy in 1960, he really relies on that cold warrior mindset to attract voters. And of course, it loses to Kennedy in 1960. Interesting counterfactual there to go with the what if Nixon had won in that thing. And he already has a relationship with Khrushchev. Could that have avoided so much of what took place with the Cuban Missile Crisis?

What do you think? That's a really good question. I mean, the intervening Cuban Revolution would have made things difficult no matter who was in the White House. But, yeah, certainly having maybe had met face to face, earlier in his presidency, Kennedy has a kind of failed summit with the Soviets that he feels like he was outmaneuvered. So maybe you're right. Maybe a more experienced politician and Kennedy was so young and had limited foreign policy experience. Things might have happened differently. Interesting.

So Justin, what fascinates me is the different personalities. I mean, we know Nixon. I mean, down the years, we certainly know him. What's interesting to me in these debates, these conversations, is the distinct difference between their personalities. I mean, you have Richard Nixon, who's, you know, a consummate politician, a real lawyer's lawyer, I guess, and he's very careful about towing the line, very conscious of the camera, you know, which is going to play such a big, fateful role in his life all the way along. Whereas Cruz Chef is, is more sort of out there. He's less guarded with himself, especially when he's in Moscow. And you see this, let's this in this clip. You can see the differences between their personalities in just the way they talk to each other. We will say America has existed 150 years, and this is her level of achievement. We have existed not quite 42 years. And seven years from now, we will be on the same level of achievement as America.

And the following years, we shall continue to surge ahead. And when we shall overtake you at the crossroads, we will greet you amiably. And after that, if you wish, we can stop and tell you, please follow us. There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the development of your of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space. There may be some instances, for example, color television where we're ahead of you. And what are they ahead of us? Wrong, wrong.

We are ahead of you in rockets as well as in this technique. I do not capitulate. It's a fascinating dynamic, which they seem to be enjoying. I mean, there's a lot of prickliness between them, of course. But the format of these debates had to be a surprise to both of these guys. at least certainly to Nixon, that they were going to go right at each other with a microphone between them. Yeah, that's definitely the case. I think we have to remember that the idea that cameras were rolling and recording what they did, this was unusual. This was a little bit unexpected. And we're not really sure what they said off camera,

because only a small portion of these conversations were recorded for later historians. But I think Khrushchev has a more playful attitude. And my, when I view these, clips, I feel like Nixon is on the defensive. And I feel like he feels like he has a case that he needs to make. But I would say Khrushchev has more swagger, if I can use a contemporary term. And Nixon feels like he's backpedaling and maybe on shaky ground. I always wonder, was Khrushchev like a big wild card for the Soviets? I mean, they had to know this guy was a little out there, wasn't he? Yeah, he emerges in a power struggle that goes on after Stalin's death. There's sort of a race to see who's going to lead the Soviet Union and Khrushchev ends up dominant.

And I think you see part of the reason here because of his really abrasive, intense personality. That's, I think, what makes him so successful. Eventually, he's going to be pushed out of power. And as you alluded to, you know, Brezhnev will head the Soviet Union later. But he has this real dogmatic ideology. And I think that Nixon will become like that later in his career, you know, 10 years later when he takes office. But he's not there yet. He's not there when he's the vice president. In fact, when he campaigns the following year, Eisenhower is kind of hard-pressed to come up with when asked by reporters, much that Nixon has done.

He's like, oh, give me a week and I'll get back to you and maybe I'll tell you something my VP has contributed. it, which is ironic because of this, you know, a high-profile negotiation just on the outskirts of Moscow. It's kind of a snub to Nixon when he runs for president. Food plays a big part in Nixon's later presidential career, doesn't it? I'm so glad you mentioned this. You can almost think of food as book-ending Nixon's political rise and fall. You know, we're right now commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Watergate trials. And what I think is ironic is that Nixon, food always has a place in Nixon's presidency. This would represent the beginnings of his race for the White House and he doesn't win the election to 1968. But in the Watergate crisis, when it's unfolding

about 50 years ago, there's this event where people are so focused on Watergate that it comes to become America's food identity. So there is a Watergate cake that you see recipes starting 1973, and it gets its name because, like Watergate, it's full of nuts and has a cover-up. This is a big frosty, and later on it becomes known as Watergate salad, and I remember having something similar to this when I was a kid. It's pistachio pudding mix, or kind of of pistachio cake mix, canned pineapple and cool it mixed together, and so it has kind of this weird greenish hue to it, sometimes it's chopped with little cherries, and it symbolizes the final exit of Nixon's food journey.

Yeah, and the end of Cool Whip, for that matter. I mean, I used to eat that stuff by the spoonful. Justin, how does this kitchen debate relate to other eras of food history, and just in terms of the food? One of the interesting terms for how food interacts with American politics is coined by historian Amy Kaplan. She talks about manifest domesticity, which is a play on words on the more well-known 19th century manifest destiny. And the point she's making, her study is the U.S. Mexican War in the 1840s, but the point that she's making could be applied more broadly, which is that the idea of the home, and especially the role of homemaking, of taking care of the family, and of feeding the family,

that this could be applied more broadly to other aspects of diplomacy, military conflicts. And I think it's a good term because it shows how food is really central to our identities, both here domestically, but also around the world. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to think that this could have been called the garage debate or the backyard debate. I mean, it is very specifically the kitchen debate because it's the kitchen table issues that really matter to these people at this point.

Understanding, we've got Levittown, we've got a whole explosion of a new lifestyle happening in America that certainly Nixon wants to tap into. He's a young man at that point. He's seeing the future of his political career as swinging this whole middle class his way. And on the flip side, you have Khrushchev who's, you know, trying to prove to the world that this brand new idea, still relatively new idea that communism can work, is going to play out well for them. You can't just build a nation based on space rockets. So what happens in the kitchen is what's going to happen in the world in the future. Justin Nordstrom is a professor of history at Penn State University.

also the author of Danger on the Doorstep, Anti-Catholicism and the American print culture in the Progressive Era. What a title. And I like this, the editor of Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes, the original 1927 cookbook. You have an eclectic career, sir. Thank you so much, Don. Thanks for having me. It was great to talk. Bye-bye.

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