As the American journalist Marguerite Higgins was travelling by train from Finland to Russia in the early 1950s, a Soviet customs officer confiscated from her a copy of the seemingly innocuous magazine Good Housekeeping. The official claimed that he needed to verify with his supervisor whether she was permitted to have this publication in her possession. Higgins, however, believed, ‘What bothered him (…) were the photographs of refrigerators, shiny kitchens, and home decorations. These illustrations would make it obvious to any Russian that there are lots of things for sale in the United States that are not available to Russians.’ Her assumption may have been correct, but towards the end of the decade, Soviet citizens were able to see for themselves the remarkable wares accessible to American consumers: during the summer of 1959, more than two million visitors were officially admitted to the American National Exhibition held in Moscow. By this time, Nikita Khrushchev had initiated a policy to increase the flow of consumer goods within the Soviet Union, and confident that this mandate would succeed, he declared his ambition to ‘catch up with and overtake’ the capitalist world during the infamous ‘Kitchen Debate’ with then American vice-president Richard Nixon. Standing before a model washing machine, the two leaders discussed security issues and the merits of their rival political systems. Nixon stressed the widespread availability of household appliances and the broad choices open to the American consumer. Khrushchev meanwhile acknowledged the superiority of Western technology in the domestic sphere, but claimed that the Soviet Union would soon reach parity with the United States. This contest, like the incident that Higgins described, highlighted the symbolic and ideological significance of household goods during the Cold War – this time on the international stage.

In the American case, according to the historian Elaine Tyler May, the combination of the reliable breadwinning husband and the purposeful homemaking wife quelled unease over the external threats of the post-war world order. At the center of this scenario was the suburban single-family home, epitomised by ‘Levittown’. As May argued in her path-breaking book Homeward Bound, American families during the Cold War were drawn to the home because it held emotional appeal after the tragedies of the Great Depression and World War II, and offered optimum contentment and security against nuclear holocaust and communism.