The Competition to be Modern
In the period following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 and the rise of his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, new fronts of Cold War competition opened up.
Soviet leader Khrushchev promised the watching world, and his citizens at home, that the Soviet Union would 'catch up and overtake' America.
The West picked up the challenge. At the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, US Vice-President Richard Nixon challenged Khrushchev: 'Would it not be better to compete in the relative merits of washing machines than in the strength of rockets?'
Thaw Modern
Revelations about the brutality of Stalin's rule by his successor Khrushchev in 1956 led to a period of considerable change in the Eastern Bloc, known as the Thaw.
Demands for freedom of speech and the extension of democracy escalated into fierce protests in Poland and a revolution in Hungary, suppressed with Soviet tanks.
To assuage dissent, communist leaders throughout the Bloc addressed the problems of living conditions. Designers and architects were commissioned to create bright new homes and prototypes for modern consumer goods.
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