As US sociologist David Riesman presciently wrote in 1951: "If allowed to sample the riches of America, the Russian people would not long tolerate masters who gave them tanks and spies instead of vacuum-cleaners and beauty parlours."Īnd so under Khrushchev's "thaw", munitions plants became toy factories and chemical labs turned their hands to perfume. The exhibits at Grad, with their colourful plastic casings and space-age forms, read like the fallout from this momentous meeting – the products of a hasty Soviet scramble to compete with, and outdo, the bounties of western capitalist consumerism. As each boasted of their country's industrial accomplishments, the message could not have been clearer: the USSR might have launched the first satellite – Sputnik – two years earlier, but the reality of miserable living conditions and the scarcity of consumer goods (crowds jostled to collect used Pepsi cups from the exhibition) showed how far they had to go. The poster was produced in 1959, the same year that saw the momentous "kitchen debate" at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, an impromptu war of words between Khrushchev and then US vice-president Richard Nixon, which ignited as they cooed over the latest mod cons of the American home. Brimming with vacuum-cleaners and biscuit tins, radios and fridges, the show pulls together a collection of over 50 objects to give a fascinating snapshot of the Soviet home, radiating the optimism of Khrushchev's ambition to "catch up and overtake America". ![]() On display at Grad, the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design in London, the poster sets the tone for an exhibition that attempts to peer through the keyhole at domestic Soviet design, from the revolution to perestroika. ![]() Presented as modern and aspirational, they instead proved cramped, overcrowded and as flimsy as the posters that promoted them. It is one of the many "khrushchyovkas" that sprung up across Soviet cities in the 1960s, the low-cost, mass-housing blocks that were the product of Nikita Khrushchev's frenzied building drive. Outside stands a crane, hauling concrete panels into place to complete another new apartment building, gleaming in cheery communist red. ![]() 'It's time for a grand house-warming!" declares a bold Soviet poster, depicting a housewife in a sunny yellow dress, flinging open the windows of her new home.
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