QUESTIONS ON THE “KITCHEN DEBATE”

In what ways, according to Richard Nixon, was U.S. industry outperforming that of the Soviet Union?

How did Nikita Khrushchev respond to the vice president’s remarks about American consumer goods?

What does the “kitchen debate” reveal about U.S. and Soviet industrial and technological priorities in the 1950s? Why did the two states pursue these different concerns?

How did Nixon and Khrushchev’s exchange concern issues of gender? In other words, what were their gender assumptions?

Judging from the debate in Moscow, how important was leisure to American society in the fifteen years following the end of World War II? What were the implications for American popular culture?