Cold War Cultural Transactions: Designing the USSR for the West at Brussels Expo ’58

Abstract

Focusing on the Cold War Expo in Brussels 1958, this article takes the metaphor of "design diplomacy" as a lens through which to explore the dilemmas of Soviet exhibition planners charged with designing a modern image of the USSR at the World Fair. Seeking ways to represent the advantages of socialism to foreign, especially Western publics, the exhibition organizers began to question established Soviet tradecraft in the production of mass exhibitions, concluding instead that if the USSR was to make itself understood by the capitalist "other," it must adopt selectively the idiom of its audience and interlocutor. The Soviet 'self was constituted in relation to two main "others": the USA, whose pavilion was adjacent to the Soviet one; and the anticipated public, about whom the Soviet designers knew little. As in diplomatic transactions, the art of persuasion demanded negotiation and compromise, resulting in a degree of transculturation and cross-fertilization.

Socialist, Humanist and Well-Designed: The Polish Welfare State at the International Labour Exhibition in Turin, 1961

“…12 Susan Reid has explained design diplomacy as the study of 'how international relations have been materialized and played out in the multimedia form of international expositions, and, conversely, how the design of such expositions helped shape international relations'. 13 This paper combines these two approaches to design diplomacy. It demonstrates that by deploying graphic design, exhibition design and the design of modern facilities for public use, the exhibition makers, including a labour policy expert and a team of experienced designers, created 'a brilliant scenography'as Rogers termed itfor presenting the post-Stalinist welfare project of People's Poland.…”