Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: I Tell Stories
Episode: To Pepsi From Russia: Love is Fleeting
Description: Send a textWhat starts as a casual joke about where we’re “from” steers into one of the strangest corporate chapters of the Cold War: the day Pepsi traded soft drink syrup for decommissioned Soviet warships. We rewind to the 1959 cultural exhibitions and the Kitchen Debate, where a single glass of Pepsi handed to Khrushchev set the stage for the brand to enter the USSR in 1972. Because rubles couldn’t convert, Pepsi took payment in Stolichnaya, selling vodka in Western markets to make the math work—until sanctions squeezed that channel shut.As the Soviet sys...