Kitchen Debate

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev (left, foreground) and U.S. vice president Richard Nixon (right) debate the merits of communism versus capitalism in a model American kitchen at the American National Exhibition in Moscow (July 1959); photo by Thomas J. O'Halloran, Library of Congress collection U.S. vice president Nixon spars with Khrushchev before reporters and onlookers, including Politburo members Leonid Brezhnev, Anastas Mikoyan and Yekaterina Furtseva at the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park, in Moscow, 1959

The Kitchen Debate (Russian: Кухонные дебаты, romanized: Kukhonnye debaty) was a series of impromptu exchanges through interpreters between U.S. vice president (later U.S. president) Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959.