Скачать или смотреть The Time Pepsi Owned the World's 6th Largest Navy

In 1959, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev had a shouting match in a fake American kitchen. Standing on the sidelines was Donald Kendall, a desperate Pepsi executive who just wanted to save his job. He didn't know it yet, but that day sparked a chain of events that would eventually turn a soft drink company into a global maritime power.

This is the story of how the Soviet Union’s addiction to sugar water grew so intense that they ran out of money to pay for it. With the Ruble worthless and the vodka market crashing, the Kremlin did the only logical thing: they bartered their military hardware. For a brief, absurd moment in 1989, PepsiCo found itself in possession of 17 submarines, a cruiser, a destroyer, and a frigate, effectively disarming the communist superpower faster than the US government ever could.

From the sweaty "Kitchen Debate" to the scrap yards of Norway, this is how capitalism dissolved the Iron Curtain—not with nuclear fire, but with carbonation.

Pepsi Navy, Cold War history, Soviet Union collapse, Donald Kendall, Nikita Khrushchev, Kitchen Debate 1959, weird history, economic history, USSR submarines, capitalism vs communism, barter economy, PepsiCo history, Soviet vodka trade, offbeat history, military trivia.