Table Of ContentCOLD WAR ON THE HOME FRONT
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COLD WAR
HOME FRONT
on the
The Soft Power of Midcentury Design
Greg Castillo
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 2010 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Castillo, Greg.
Cold war on the home front : the soft power of midcentury design /
Greg Castillo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-4691-3 (hc : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-8166-4692-0
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Consumer goods—United States—History—20th century.
2. Consumer goods—Soviet Union—History—20th century.
3. Capitalism—United States—History—20th century. 4. Socialism—
United States—History—20th century. 5. Cold War. 6. Propaganda,
American. 7. Propaganda, Soviet. I. Title. II. Title: Soft power of
midcentury design.
HF1040.8.C37 2010
339.4´709045—dc22
2009036239
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
INTRODUCTION Domesticity as a Weapon vii
1 Household Affluence and Its Discontents 1
2 Cultural Revolutions in Tandem 31
3 Better Living through Modernism 59
4 Stalinism by Design 87
5 People’s Capitalism and Capitalism’s People 111
6 The Trojan House Goes East 139
7 Consuming Socialism 173
EPILOGUE Critical Masses 203
Acknowledgments 209
Notes 211
Index 261
Domesticity as a Weapon
In 1951, sociologist David Riesman published a fictitious account of an INTRODUCTION
American bombing campaign involving consumer goods rather than
explosives. What U.S. officials called “Operation Abundance” was
dubbed “The Nylon War” by Riesman’s imaginary reporters, following
its opening barrage of the USSR with women’s stockings. The strategy
was inspired and devious:
Behind the initial raid of June 1 were years of secret and
complex preparations, and an idea of disarming simplicity: that
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 parlors. The Russian
rulers would thereupon be forced to turn out consumers’ goods,
or face mass discontent on an increasing scale.1
Operation Abundance “was both violently anti-Soviet and pro-peace,”
according to Riesman’s cold war parody, and entailed “recruitment of
top-flight production and merchandising talent from civilian life.”
Successive waves of air-dropped samples were said to throw socialist
society into disarray “as Soviet housewives saw for their own eyes
American stoves, refrigerators, clothing and toys.” Riesman described
the war’s outcome as a new Soviet policy that strained state resources
in an attempt to enfranchise citizens as consumers. “[T]he Russian
people, without saying so in as many words, are now putting a price on
their collaboration with the regime. The price—‘goods instead of guns.’”2
Less than a decade after its publication, Riesman’s lampoon came
to seem prophetic. In the late summer of 1959, Russians got their first
taste of the celebrated American Way of Life at the American National
Exhibition in Moscow. Advising on exhibition planning, Llewellyn
Thompson, the U.S. ambassador to the USSR, proposed that the (facing page)“To Protect
displays “endeavor to make the Soviet people dissatisfied with the share Our Way of Living,” a
of the Russian pie which they now receive, and make them realize that U.S. propaganda poster
of the 1940s, presents
the slight improvements projected in their standard of living are only a
military and industrial
drop in the bucket compared to what they could and should have.”3In
prowess as key ingredi-
the eight years that had transpired since the publication of Riesman’s
ents of the American
“Nylon War,” however, the deployment of U.S. consumer goods behind
Way of Life. Quality
the iron curtain had become defensive, rather than simply offensive. Postcards, Oakland,
The successful Soviet test of a ballistic missile, detonation of a hydrogen California, qpfans.com.
vii
viii // Introduction
bomb, and launch of the first artificial orbital satellite, Sputnik,
established the USSR as a leader in cold war technology. At the Soviet
Exhibition of Science, Technology and Culture, staged in New York’s
Coliseum in June 1959, a replica of Sputnik hung like the sword of
Damocles above the heads of entering visitors. Installations included
a rocket engine, a nuclear particle accelerator, and a scale model of a
An exterior view reactor-powered icebreaking ship.4Washington’s propagandists took
of “Splitnik,” with its a decidedly different approach for the reciprocal U.S. exhibition in
ten-foot-wide central Moscow. They attempted to shift the terms of the debate from military
corridor, allowing crowds
hardware to modern housewares—a domain of uncontested American
of visitors to flow easily
preeminence. Rather than constituting unilateral assertions of cold war
through the interior. U.S.
superiority, these two national exhibitions reveal the influence that each
National Archives, Still
superpower wielded over the self-image projected by its rival.5
Pictures Division, RG306
PS B Subjects “Houses— Nestled in the greenery of Moscow’s suburban Sokol’niki Park,
Model” 59-10679. the American National Exhibition presented Soviet citizens with a
Introduction // ix
smattering of advanced technology and high culture but yielded center
stage to a consumer goods extravaganza. It included cosmetics,
clothing, televisions, sewing machines, kitchen appliances, packaged
convenience foods, soft drinks, sporting goods, mail order catalogs,
fiberglass sailboats, and automobiles. Its two furnished model homes
bore more propaganda significance as platforms for a consumer life-
style than as housing prototypes, bolstering the exhibition’s “Trojan
house” display strategy. Both residences showcased a kind of com-
modity production that East bloc economies could not yet emulate, in
that consumer durables require a highly developed light-manufacturing
sector rather than the heroic heavy industries promoted by Stalin-era
socialism.
Covering the Moscow exhibition for U.S. audiences, American
reporters ignored the show’s model apartment, outfitted with iconic
modernist pieces selected by George Nelson, the designer whose firm
had coordinated the exhibition. Instead, they wrote into history a
prefabricated tract home donated by All-State properties, a New York
developer based in Long Island. A bisecting gangway permitted Soviet
crowds to flow unimpeded past the home’s furnished interiors, inspir-
ing journalists to dub the suburban prefab “Splitnik,” an apt nickname,
given the U.S. goal of undercutting Sputnik’s global publicity coup.
Pravda,Moscow’s Party newspaper, complained: “There is no more
truth in showing this as the typical home of an American worker than,
say, the Taj Mahal as a typical house of a Bombay textile worker, or
Buckingham Palace as the typical home of an English miner.” Indeed,
there was a grain of truth to the accusation.6Splitnik’s showroom-new
appointments, fresh from Macy’s Manhattan department store, were
anything but typical for an American working-class household. How-
ever, for a skilled worker wielding a federally guaranteed Veterans
Administration mortgage (with no down payment required), the
1,144-square-foot home, selling for around $13,000 including its
suburban lot, was in fact within reach—if just barely.7
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev seemed testy on his opening-
day tour of the exhibition, which was hosted by U.S. Vice President
Richard Nixon. Their visit to an RCA-sponsored television display
began what turned out to be the opening round of an extended sparring
match. In front of live video cameras, Khrushchev made a rash wager:
“In another seven years we will be on the same level as America. When
we catch up with you, while passing by we will wave back to you.”8U.S.
