Questions for discussion:

How did the Khrushchev conceive of the future of the Soviet Union? What was the role of the West in this new ideological worldview?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

Susan E. Reid, ‘Who Will Beat Whom?: Soviet Popular Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 9, Number 4 (2008).

Have a look at the images from the American National Exhibition in this article: https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-all-american-expo-that-invaded-cold-war-russia-550628823. The Whirlpool promotional video for its Miracle Kitchen (towards the end of the article) gives a glimpse into how both sides of the Cold War were imagining the technological future.

Selected further reading:

Melanie Ilič, Susan Reid and Lynne Attwood (eds.), Women in the Khrushchev Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), especially the overview by Melanie Ilič and Sue Bridger’s article on women and space flight.

Juliane Fürst, Polly Jones and Susan Morrissey, ‘The Relaunch of the Soviet Project, 1945-1964: Introduction’. SEER, Volume 86, Number 2 (2008). Further articles in this volume are also worth reading.

Anne Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker, eds., The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World (Indiana University Press, 2013). E-book.

Eva Maurer, Julia Richers, Monica Ruthers and Carmen Scheide, eds., Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (Basingstoke, 2011). E-book.

Susan E. Reid & David Crowley, eds. Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Postwar Eastern Europe (Oxford; New York: Berg, 1999).

Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Problem from Stalin to Khrushchev (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).

William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason, eds. Nikita Khrushchev, trans. by David Gehrenbeck and Eileen Kane (Yale University Press, 2000). E-book.