Liter per liter: how the USSR and the USA officially changed vodka to Pepsi-Cola

The Pepsi Cola Company first contacted the new and still mysterious Land of the Soviets in 1938. The company really wanted to get ahead of its main competitor - The Coca-Cola Company, says Maxim Online.

Photo: Shutterstock, ForumDaily collage

So The Pepsi Cola Company hastened to register the right of exclusive use of its trademark on the territory of the USSR with the Trademark Registration Bureau of the USSR People's Commissariat for Trade.

Nevertheless, the first acquaintance of Soviet citizens with the bubbling sweet brown drink took place only after the war, in 1959, during the exhibition of American life "Industrial Products of the USA" held in Sokolniki.

At the request of the President of The Pepsi Cola Company, Donald Kendall, US President Richard Nixon treated Nikita Khrushchev to an overseas drink. And he didn’t just treat him. He offered Khrushchev two types of Pepsi: one brought from the United States and one made the day before in Moscow from concentrate.

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So Kendall wanted to convince the Soviet leadership that he could produce the drink on their territory. Khrushchev tried it and replied: "Moscow Pepsi Cola is much better than the one made in New York."

But Kendall had no intention of dwelling on treating Soviet leaders and select exhibitors. He wanted to give Pepsi drink to the entire Land of the Soviets.

From the businessman’s memoirs: “I came to Russia in 1970... Tommy Thompson, who was ambassador here in 1959, told me: “If you want to do business with them, you need to forget about direct cash transactions. Barter only." And he also said: “The Russians are beside themselves over Smirnov vodka. Smirnoff looks like a Russian product and is bottled in Hartford, Connecticut. We need to offer them Pepsi in exchange for Russian vodka.”

Reality is ahead of business plans. When Kendall shook hands with Kosygin, he himself told him: "Oh, you are the same person who wants to trade with us in exchange for our vodka." That evening, during an official reception, Kosygin approached Kendall with a specific business proposal: "We want to trade with you, your Pepsi for our vodka, liter per liter."

This is how Soviet citizens received American Pepsi, and American citizens received Soviet Stolichnaya vodka.

During 1973–1981, 1,9 million deciliters of Stolichnaya vodka worth $25 million were shipped to the USA, and 32,3 million deciliters of Pepsi were produced in the USSR, sold for 303,3 million rubles. The benefit of the USSR was obvious: the sale of a similar volume of vodka in its homeland would have brought 164 million rubles, that is, 139,3 million less than the sale of Pepsi-Cola.

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Well, the first Pepsi-Cola plant in the USSR was opened in Novorossiysk in 1974. The entire PepsiCo board of directors came to the opening - it was an absolute victory in taking the new economic territory out from under the nose of The Coca-Cola Company. Not to mention the fact that the Americans got real Russian vodka.

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