It is indicative of American culture in these years that the particular consumer culture approach was chosen by the organization of the exhibition, which was America’s de facto Cold War propaganda machinery known as the United States Information Agency (U.S.I.A.).
Post-war prosperity had created a new (mass) consumer culture in the U.S. This subculture consisted partly of a high demand on domestic appliances, to be used in the newly built suburban homes. These homes became the center of personal fulfillment for many Americans, who at the beginning of the Cold War increasingly looked towards their family for warmth and security, instead of towards their respective communities.[1] As such, decorating these centers of family life to personal wishes became a now financially available goal for many people. Newly invented appliances, with ever changing designs due to producer’s cleverness, could satisfy this somewhat naïve (or consumerist) need for apparent individuality. In short, the monotone experience of suburban living could be made more heterogeneous by creating a distinguishable interior.
These specific appliances themselves had more essential connotations to some, for instance a sense of freedom (from labor), effortless ease, and modernity.[2] As such, they became an identity marker for many citizens, and its seemingly universal availability within the U.S. an indication of American superiority.
The widespread (yet not universal!) availability of consumer products and the suburban home thus became distinctive features of the American way of life in the fifties. What better way to promote the U.S. abroad then this middle class ideal of abundance, then? Characteristic of a general trust in its own superiority, many American policymakers thought that especially the Russian citizens, living under a totalitarian regime and comparative poverty, would be struck by their American counterpart’s prosperity.
This presumption was also Richard Nixon’s, as he made clear in the running ‘kitchen debate’ he had with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on the day of the exhibition’s opening. As a dialogue, the debate between these two politicians is indicative of the ideological conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War period.
While walking around in the golden dome and the fiberglass pavilion of the exhibition grounds, Nixon professed a belief in the widespread availability of the displayed products in the U.S. and in America’s superiority in the realm of its citizens’ everyday life. He praised American technological ingenuity and the general availability of high standard products to a mass public. The diversity in designs and the individual consumer’s choice were also hailed as examplerary of America’s freedoms, which Nixon thus translated into materialism. ”Diversity, the right to choose, the fact that we have 1,000 builders building 1,000 different houses is the most important thing. We don’t have one decision made at the top by one government official. This is the difference.”[3]
Khrushchev on the other hand constantly downplayed these arguments, labeling the products as capitalist excesses, and exaggerating the Soviet Union’s progress on this field. In a few years, he bragged, “we’ll be at the level of America, and after that we’ll go farther. As we pass you by, we’ll wave ‘hi’ to you, and then if you want, we’ll stop and say, ‘please come along behind us.’”
Thus, Nixon’s emphasis on freedom, democratic choices, and prosperity epitomized the American view of itself as the harbor of democratic capitalism. Khrushchev remarks indicate his reliance on technology for in his eyes practical defense technology and the communist disdain for capitalism.
Yet the Soviet leadership’s was very at unease with the strength of the American message as portrayed on the exhibit. At first, they tried to keep Nixon’s visit, and the exhibition in general, on a low profile. Time magazine complained about this cool reception at the time, reporting that on Nixon’s arrival in Moscow “there was no playing of anthems, no crowd of the kind the U.S.S.R. can muster for a visiting Mongolian.” [4]
The state controlled Russian press also ‘told’ Nixon after the kitchen debate that it was not necessary to exaggerate on American achievements.[5]
The official Soviet fear of the soft power of American consumer culture was justified. Muscovites flocked to the exhibition in great numbers and mostly loved what they saw. They were enthusiastic about the American showcase of unfamiliar luxuries. For instance, the fashion part of the exhibition was particularly of interest to the unfashionable Russians.
The overall emphasis on middle class life in the U.S. was part of the exhibition’s success.[6] The accessibility of these luxury items to what were supposed to be their American counterparts was agonizing to many Russians. As Life somewhat self congratulatingly reported coming from the ‘fascinated Russians who flocked to the U.S. exhibit’: “Can your workers really buy this”? [7]
The domestic American press in general immediately recognized the success of exhibition. Time and Life reported in print and picture friendly Russian faces all around, and argued that the American fair had wowed Moscow. They accurately wrote that the Russians would be more aware of their countries slow economic- industrial progress, and somewhat optimistically predicted that ‘the Iron Curtain would never be the same again.’ [8]
These positive reports led one American reader from Wisconsin to predict hopefully:
“I foresee a new era of neighborliness and friendship [between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.].” [9]
Although these accounts seem too optimistic to me, I do think the exhibition was one of the foundations on which the attractiveness of American culture (i.e. soft power) was built during the Cold War. As such, it was a direct confrontation to the Russians to that idealized lifestyle that some scholars argue was a decisive facilitator behind the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
A more immediate consequence of the exhibition was the new availability of the American principle of installment buying. Unfortunately for many Russians, there weren’t many consumer products in the shops of Moscow or St. Petersburg to buy.[10]
As an anomaly to the overall nature of the exhibition, the art section at the pavilion did not at first sight looked to serve propagandistic means. There had precipitated a debate in the U.S. on sending some controversial artworks, such as Jack Levine’s 1946 anti-war piece ‘Coming Home’. Conservative post-McCarthy McCarthyites attacked some of these works on their supposedly anti-American connotations. One critic said that “we must be sure that any work sent over there will be of a high quality, and cannot be used as a proof of the decadence existing under a capitalist system.” Another, complaining about Levine’s piece, stated that “This art as a weapon to arouse hatred of our free society and people considered representative of it. . . . His picture of the gum-chewing 'stuffed-shirt' American general will help the Kremlin convince its enslaved people that its vicious propaganda about American military leaders is true.” [11] In the end president Eisenhower, himself not a fan but a respectable critic of the controversial artwork, had to intervene and decided the artworks as picked by the art commission would attend the Moscow exhibition. This decision would only reinforce the positive Russian image of American freedom. The displayed art was seen as a manifestation of a free society, which respects its critics even when disagreeing with them. [12] Thus, in the end even the art exhibit did its promotional work as intended by the U.S.I.A.,[13] as ‘freedom on show.’
Richard Nixon characteristically denied the real American intentions behind the staging of an exhibition like this one. He stated that “This exhibit was not designed to astound, but to interest.” I think this last remark was part of the strength of the exhibition. The display of alleged everyday American life was instrumental in downscaling the diplomatic goal of the exhibition, which could have caused a backlash among the foreign public. The exhibition was presented with an openness to which the Soviet public was not used to but all the more eager for. It convincingly said to tell the truth by depicting the normal American way of life. It promoted ideals of freedom and democracy. All of this made the American National Exhibit in Moscow a very effective means for Cold War cultural diplomacy.
Footnotes
[1] Elaine Taylor May, Home ward Bound. American families in the cold war era (1988) pp. 17
[2] Karal Ann Marling, As seen on TV. The visual culture of everyday life in the 1950’s (Harvard College 1994) 253
[3] Transcript of the debate found on: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=176
[4] Time Magazine, ‘Better to see once’, August 10, 1959
[5] Time Magazine, ‘Roughing it’, August 10, 1959
[6] Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of plenty : exhibiting American culture abroad in the 1950s, pp. 209
[7] Life Magazine, August 10, 1959, vol. 46 no.6
[8] Time Magazine, Roughing it’, August 10 and ‘Russia comes to the fair’, August 3
[9] Life Magazine, vol.47 no.9, August 31, 1959
[10] Time Magazine, ‘On the Red’, August 31, 1959
[11] Kushner, Marilyn, ‘Exhibiting art at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: domestic politics and cultural diplomacy’, Journal of Cold War studies, vol. 4 issue 1 (January 2002) pp.6-10
[12] Ibidem, pp. 20
[13] Time Magazine, 'Freedom on show', August 17, 1959
