Kitchen Debate

The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges (through interpreters) between then U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959. For the exhibition, an entire house was built that the American exhibitors claimed anyone in America could afford. It was filled with labor-saving and recreational devices meant to represent the fruits of the capitalist American consumer market. The debate was recorded on color videotape and Nixon made reference to this fact; it was subsequently rebroadcast in both countries.

In 1959, the Soviets and Americans had agreed to hold exhibits in each other's countries as a cultural exchange to promote understanding. The Soviet exhibit in New York opened in June 1959, and the following month Vice President Nixon was on hand to open the US exhibit in Moscow. Nixon took Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on a tour of the exhibit. As recounted by William Safire who was present as the exhibitor's press agent, the Kitchen debate took place in a number of locations at the exhibition but primarily in the kitchen of a suburban model house, cut in half for easy viewing.

In the course of the tour Khrushchev surprised Nixon when he protested a resolution passed by the US Congress that condemned the Soviet Union for its "control" over the "captive" peoples of Eastern Europe and called upon Americans to pray for those people. After protesting the actions of the US Congress, he dismissed the new technology of the US and declared that the Soviets would have all of the same things in a few years and then say "Bye bye" as they surpassed the U.S. He satirically asked if there was a machine that "puts food into the mouth and pushes it down". Nixon responded by saying at least the competition was technological, rather than military. Both men agreed that the United States and the Soviet Union should seek areas of agreement. At the end, Khrushchev stated that everything he had said in their debate should be translated into English and broadcast in the US. Nixon responded "Certainly it will, and everything I say is to be translated into Russian and broadcast across the Soviet Union. That's a fair bargain." To this proposal, Khrushchev shook hands vigorously.

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