At the 1959 American National Exhibition, the carefully prepared American pavilion was essentially a massive "supermarket."
At that time, the government had transported three thousand tons of goods, from books and magazines to movies and records, from canned food to washing machines, televisions, refrigerators, cars, boats, tractors, and other mechanical equipment, all displayed in the supermarket to showcase the huge commodity economy and prosperity under the free market economic system.
And the initial Soviet leader Khrushchev had attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition and engaged in a debate about "East-West ideologies and nuclear war" with Vice President Nixon.
At that time, the Soviet Union, employing a planned economy, was experiencing a famine.
Facing the assault of supermarket culture, confronted by dense crowds and dazzling arrays of products, no one knew what Khrushchev truly felt.
