Questions in a Kitchen

Not long before President Eisenhower invited me to visit the United States, the Americans organized an exhibition in Sokolniki Park. Mr. Nixon, the Vice President of the United States, came to Moscow for the opening. He and I went together to see a display supposedly showing a typical American kitchen. I began to inspect the appliances. There were some interesting things, but there were also a number of things which seemed purely for show and of no use. Once I'd commented on this I had swallowed the hook and was caught in a lengthy conversation with Nixon which newsmen would refer to for years to come as characterizing Soviet-American relations.

The conversation began like this: I picked up an automatic device for squeezing lemon juice for tea and said, "What a silly thing for your people to exhibit in the Soviet Union, Mr. Nixon. All you need for tea is a couple of drops of lemon juice. I think it would take a housewife longer to use this gadget than it would for her to do what our housewives do: slice a piece of lemon, drop it into a glass of tea, then squeeze a few drops out with a spoon. I don't think this appliance of yours is an improvement in any way. In fact, you can squeeze a lemon faster by hand. This kind of nonsense is an insult to our intelligence."

Well, Nixon disagreed, and he tried to bring me around to his way of thinking, arguing in that very exuberant way of his. I responded in kind. The debate began to flare up and went on and on. The newsmen pressed around us with their tape recorders going and their microphones shoved into our faces.

After a while I put a direct question to him: "Mr. Nixon, you've brought all this wonderful equipment here to show us, but have you really put it into widespread use? Do American housewives have it in their kitchens?" To be fair, Nixon answered honestly that what they were showing us hadn't yet come onto the market. At that point people burst out laughing. I said, "Hah! So you're showing off to us a lot of stuff which you haven't even introduced in your own country! You thought you'd get us to ooh and ahh over all this junk you've brought here!"

Of course, what we were really debating was a question of two opposing systems: capitalism and socialism. The Americans wanted to impress Russians with a lot of fancy gadgets. They were sure that Russians wouldn't know the difference if the exhibit included some things which most American housewives have never laid eyes on. To a certain extent the organizers of the exhibit may have been right about this. They wanted the Russians to think, "So this is the sort of equipment they have in capitalist countries! Why don't we have such things under socialism?" That was the idea, anyway, unrealistic as it may have been. As for Nixon, he was behaving as a representative of the world's largest capitalist country. I'm not saying that America doesn't have great riches, as well as technological skills. Of course it does; what's true is true. I'm just talking about the exhibit, which consisted mostly of a bunch of photographs, some household products you won't find in any household,* and some pieces of sculpture which were good for nothing but laughing and spitting at.

So much for my first introduction to Richard Nixon. I'd known of him from the press since long before because he'd occupied a special position among American political leaders. We considered him a man of reactionary views, a man hostile to the Soviet Union. In a word, he was a McCarthyite.

However, I'd like to add a final word about Nixon. When I was in retirement, Nixon came to the Soviet Union [in April 1965]. After he'd already flown away, I learned that he had found out where my apartment was and had tried to come see me. He thought I was living in the city and wanted to call on me. He was told I wasn't there. To be honest, I very much regretted missing him. I was touched that he would take the trouble in view of the fact that our relations had always been tense. On the occasions we met we rarely exchanged kind words. More often than not we bickered. But he showed genuine human courtesy when he tried to see me after my retirement. I'm very sorry I didn't have an opportunity to thank him and to shake hands with him.

* Actually, the kitchen was typical of what could be found in a $15,000 American house in 1959.

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