
When the Soviet Union Paid Pepsi in Warships - helb
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-union-pepsi-ships
======
toomanybeersies
The Soviets also traded Lada cars for New Zealand dairy products (mainly
butter) [1], and after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia apparently even
offered MiG fighter jets, a nuclear submarine, and tanks in an attempt to pay
its $200mm debt it owed the New Zealand Dairy Board [2], which is particularly
ironic as New Zealand was at the time (and still is) a nuclear free nation.

[1] [http://www.hoonable.com/butter-for-cars-how-the-lada-came-
to...](http://www.hoonable.com/butter-for-cars-how-the-lada-came-to-new-
zealand/)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/russia-
offered...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/russia-offered-
newzealand-military-hardware)

~~~
disordinary
Yeah, I was going to mention that. My dad worked for the NZ Dairy Corporation
(which later merged with Kiwi Dairy to become the conglomerate known as
Fonterra) at the time, and they had warehouses full of cars that they had no
idea what to do with.

~~~
maxxxxx
They should have taken the fighter jets and the nuclear submarine instead of
cars...

~~~
disordinary
In New Zealand territories all nuclear weapons are banned, which is why the US
navy is banned from operating in NZ waters as they don't disclose what ships
are nuclear powered or carrying weapons.

Also, what's a dairy company going to do with fighters? At least they could
sell cars and sell / give tractors to their farmers.

~~~
pjleonhardt
> all nuclear weapons are banned

> US navy is banned from operating in NZ waters as they don't disclose what
> ships are nuclear powered or carrying weapons

One does not lead to the other. All of the US submarines and air craft
carriers are nuclear powered (and no other ships). None of the aircraft
carriers have nuclear weapons, and only the SSBN submarines can carry nuclear
weapons on board. If your second statement is true (I don't know), then it is
likely that NZ also is banning any nuclear powered ships; not just those with
nuclear weapons.

~~~
toomanybeersies
It is a ban on nuclear propulsion as well as weapons, so nuclear powered
submarines and carriers are banned. There was a bit of controversy a few years
ago as well, when the NZ government was considering utilising a Russian
nuclear powered icebreaker in Antarctica. No US Navy ship entered New Zealand
waters for 33 years from 1984, the US Coast Guard did, however.

The ban on US Navy vessels stemmed from the fact that technically, any US Navy
ship could carry nuclear weapons, and the USA would neither confirm nor deny
if a particular ship had nuclear weapons. It was a bit of a hangover from the
Cold War. The USA wasn't very happy at all in 1984 when NZ declared itself
nuclear free.

Not all US Navy ships are banned in NZ waters now, a US Navy destroyer (USS
Sampson) visited in 2016 for the Royal New Zealand Navy's 75th birthday, and
ended up helping in disaster recovery when the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura
earthquake happened at the same time, alongside the Canadian Navy, the Royal
Australian Navy, and the Japanese Navy. To reciprocate the favour, the frigate
HMNZS Te Kaha joined the Nimitz carrier group to replace the USS Fitzgerald
after it collided with a container ship.

Military relations with the USA have improved markedly in the past decade. Due
to the whole nuclear free thing, the NZ Navy wasn't allowed to dock in the
military area in Pearl Harbour for years, they had to dock with all the
civilian ships, but now they're allowed to dock in the military area. They've
also participated in RIMPAC since 2012.

~~~
tacticus
It's interesting how long lasting the reaction to french terrorism is in NZ.

~~~
baud147258
> french terrorism

Could you expand on that? Is it about Rainbow Warrior (just a guess)?

------
linkmotif
> Nixon also led Khrushchev towards a display booth that dispensed nothing
> other than Pepsi-Cola. Symbolically, the booth offered two batches: one
> mixed with American water, the other with Russian.

Sheer genius!

~~~
twic
That reminds me that the Russians and Americans drink different water on the
International Space Station:

[http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/spaceflight/space-
food/am...](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/spaceflight/space-
food/americans-russians-drink-waters-iss/)

------
dingaling
In RAF ready-rooms there used to be photos of Soviet aircraft crews holding-up
bottles of Pepsi to their intercepting NATO counterparts.

Now I know why.

------
robterrell
After my uncle sold his chain of Byte Shop computer stores, he started a
business selling Apple ][+ clones to the Soviet Union. He told me he traded
them for lumber -- this was after the olympics and I guess the vodka boycott
was stillin effect.

~~~
qbaqbaqba
Lumber played an important role in computer development in the Eastern Block:
Polish computer manufacturer Kowary(I believe somehow connected with ELWRO)
had their own sawmill and would buy western components for profits made
selling pallets. Insane.

------
itissid
It is amazing how long the USSR lasted as long as it did. I think in the end
all communist regimes fell because of the failures of central planning(even
though it bore gems like Linear Programming and Ukraine's then booming
agriculture and the Space program). I think its failures were tied to economic
failures, if you can make the economy work for the masses, people really don't
care for much else it seems....

~~~
qbaqbaqba
China seems to have hit the sweet spot(?).

~~~
umanwizard
China does not have a communist regime, despite the name.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Neither did the Soviet Union to be honest. Like so many things, what it's
called and what it is are different entities. The USSR was a communist-
inspired totalitarian command economy. It was not as unprecedented an
invention as many would imagine. It was similar to many systems of monarchic
and aristocratic rule, the only difference was that the requirements for
membership in the aristocracy were ideologically tinged rather than
predominantly based on notions of hereditary nobility. It also would have
seemed fairly familiar to anyone who had lived under a Bronze age palatial
city-state command economy. Modern China has also only ever had an
ideologically tinged totalitarian command economy, though they loosened up in
the '90s or so and became more of some variant of crony capitalism (just like
us!).

------
swagtricker
So... the "cola wars" of the 1980's that Billy Joel sings about could have
actually taken a much darker turn?

------
al2o3cr
So it _wasn 't_ totally implausible to think they could deliver a jump jet in
exchange for enough points. :)

~~~
wlesieutre
For anyone who doesn't remember Pepsi ads from the mid-90's:
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1996-man-sues-pepsi-for-not-
giv...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1996-man-sues-pepsi-for-not-giving-him-a-
harrier-jet/)

>The campaign was simple, reported CBS News correspondent John Blackstone. Buy
Pepsi products, collect points from Pepsi labels and claim prizes like
t-shirts, sunglasses, or - for 7 million points - a Harrier Jet.

>In the end, Leonard's lawsuit fizzled out. A court granted a summary judgment
in favor of Pepsi and ruled that, "no objective person could reasonably have
concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier Jet."

~~~
gboudrias
It seems somewhat ridiculous that he managed to convince five people to
"invest" in his idea. I'm surprised the article didn't touch on what seems to
be the larger point: Don't advertise things you don't sell. The ad was
dishonest not because people actually expected a harrier jet, but because it
tried to make a non-existent association between something "cool" and its
product.

This is of course something very hard to legislate, but it still feels
dishonest to me, more so than almost any ad seen today.

~~~
sosborn
> It seems somewhat ridiculous that he managed to convince five people to
> "invest" in his idea

I don’t know about that. Have you seen some of the startups that get funded?

~~~
cc81
Do you want to invest in my new Crypto Cola?

~~~
simplemath__
When's the Colacoin ICO and can I send you 10 million dollars?

------
baybal2
For people lucky to not to be born in the Eastern bloc:

All that Pepsi was destined to closely guarded, party member only, soviet
department stores stocked full of Western luxuries in the time when Soviet
citizens were subsisting on bread and water.

~~~
IWeldMelons
Yawn. When I was growing up in USSR of 1980s, Pepsi was _everywhere_, for the
cost 0.35 of a rouble for 0.33L. Soviet soda was .25 for .5 liter. Nor our
family (teachers) was "subsistent" in any way. I remember having meat
everyday, every once in a while my parents would buy a chocolate cake. It was
much poorer than US, true, but waaay more affluent than China, India, Africa
and rather capitalist Latin America.

~~~
jacquesm
When I was living in Poland in the mid 1980's you were _very_ lucky to be able
to buy toilet paper, lightbulbs, bread, meat, fruit and a ton of other
everyday stuff. Though lots of people knew someone who knew someone that had
just slaughtered a pig which could get you some meat.

Hard currency bought you stuff from those stores the GP mentions, called
Pewex, something like Pepsi was not seen in regular stores not operated by the
government.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex)

~~~
ch4ck
There was no problem whatsoever with buying such things like bread or local
fruit. Why? Because a great share of those was produced by private
entrepreneurs and had the price set by an almost free market.

Actually you can have a look at the statistical data and you will see that
there were more pigs, cows, milk etc. then than now.

The problem was with many products manufactured by the collectively/state
owned enterprises, because the prices were set artificially low centrally.
That caused lack of balance in the market. Of course you could buy those
products paying market prices to the private entrepreneurs (called speculators
by the government) in the free market (called gray or black market by the
government).

And I can assure you that Pepsi was sold in regular (not Pewex or Baltona)
stores and those stores were state owned or controlled by the state
(cooperatives) because private stores were almost nonexistent.

