There\u2019s an\nage-old saying, \u2019Pepsi Or Coke\u2019, the perfect paradox for many today of my\ngeneration who view most soft drinks best served as a \u2018mixer\u2019 with their preferred\npoison. If you were a citizen of the Soviet Union, however, Pepsi would have almost\ncertainly been you preferred beverage. Coca Cola managed to wriggle into the\nsoft drinks market of the USSR thanks to prying an opportunity from the Summer 1980\nOlympic Games. The USA had chosen to boycott these Games because of the Soviet\ninvasion of Afghanistan, but by 1986, \u2018Pepsi or Coke\u2019 had become just as \u2013 if not\nmore so \u2013 synonymous with the Soviet Union as it was with the capitalist United\nStates of America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1959, at\nthe American National Exhibition (ANEM), then Vice-President Richard Nixon and\nSoviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev exchanged arguments for why their respected cultures\nwere superior to the others\u2019. A most remarkable moment occurred when Pepsi\nexecutive Donald McIntosh Kendall offered Khrushchev a drink of Pespi.[1]<\/a>\nSubsequently, an agreement between Pepsi-Co and the Soviet Beverage Industry\nfor a ten-year contract where Pepsi-Cola would sell Pepsi concentrate in the\nU.S.S.R, with contracting a German subsidiary supplier and retention of quality\ncontrol. The exchange would be Soviet Stolichnaya and Sovertksaya vodkas being\nmarketed in America and the West.[2]<\/a>\nThe combination of events at ANEM emphasized two fundamental issues: The USSR\nwas not totally \u2018cut-off\u2019 from the West, even at its zenith; and that \u2018consumerism\u2019\ncould form a transnational connection that dwarfed the extant ideological\nboundaries. I am weary about how I use \u2018consumerism\u2019 as a noun, it is important\nnot to construe the Soviet Union to be a consumer society as the American model\npromotes[3]<\/a>,\nignoring a fundamental of the bipolar contest. There are several key\nmethodological considerations: the role of transnational \u2018actors\u2019 such as\ncorporations and politicians in building boundaries; and the ways in which \u2018transactions\u2019\nweave transnational networks. Akira Iriye\u2019s editorial monograph, Global Interdependence:\nThe World after 1945<\/em>, is one of the foundational texts I wish to use to\nexpand my theoretical considerations, particularly in an analysis of \u2018cultural\nhomogenization\u2019 versus \u2018cultural heterogenization\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I will analyse the \u2018transnational\u2019 connections through the transactions that occurred between the USSR and USA between 1959 and 1986, exploring the commodities that have become synonymous with modern-day capitalist mass-consumption. I will argue that these transactions succeeded where intellectual and institutional theories of history \u2013 including but not limited to Modernization Theory \u2013 ultimately failed in dismantling Communism. My outlying hypothesis shall focus on dismantling the arbitrary Cold-War ideological dichotomy, instead arguing that \u2018consumerism\u2019 was the key to building truly transnational networks through \u2018transactions\u2019. This shall offer a chance to look at both the invisible and visible boundaries that existed between the USSR and USA. Modernization Theory pitted \u2018modern\u2019 against \u2018traditional\u2019 societies, its deconstruction by the mid-1970s heralded the rise of a new modern totality, a \u2018global consumerism\u2019. I will build my analysis through primary-source memoirs \u2013 including Khrushchev on Khrushchev<\/em> \u2013 and a Micro-Spatial approach, following the three ways of evaluating artefacts within a global narrative of global history from De Vito and Gerritsen: cultural connections; internal synthetic global nuances and continuities; and objects as global images. I fully believe in their assertion that these approaches have potential to \u2018bring together material and symbolic connections, and circulations at various spatial scopes.\u2019[4]<\/a> I hope to argue that the same is true for the consumer culture that developed between the USA and USSR from 1959 to 1986, building a global consumerism and a successful proponent of modernity where historical theory had thus far failed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Count:\n692 [1]<\/a> Kirkpatrick,\nTim, \u2018How Pepsi briefly became the 6th<\/sup> largest military in the world\u2019,\nBusiness Insider<\/em>, (July 26, 2018), Accessed:\n25\/02\/20 <\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Keeffe, Arthur-John, \u2018Of Soft Drinks\nand Human Rights\u2019, American Bar Association Journal<\/em>, vol60:1 (January,\n1974), pp111-113, p112<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n