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Nixon made a point of telling Khrushchev that the house was well within the means of U.S. working-class families. The house cost $14,000, Nixon said, and could be paid off over the course of 25 or 30 years. "You know we are having a steel strike," said he, finessing a certain Russian high card. "Well, any steelworker can afford this house." Then the conversation drifted to kitchen equipment and exploded into a cold-war debate that newsmen dubbed the "kitchen conference" and the "Sokolniki summit."
"Threat with Threat." Looking over the ranch house's sleek, gadget-stocked kitchen, Khrushchev showed, as he did dozens of times at the exhibition, the braggy defensiveness that seems to come over Soviet officials when they confront the U.S. standard of living.
Khrushchev: You Americans think that the Russian people will be astonished to see these things. The fact is that all our new houses have this kind of equipment.
Nixon: We do not claim to astonish the Russian people. We hope to show our diversity and our right to choose. We do not want to have decisions made at the top by one government official that all houses should be built the same way.
Khrushchev made some remarks about washing machines, but Nixon pursued the debate: "Is it not far better to be talking about washing machines than machines of war, like rockets? Isn't this the kind of competition you want?"
Khrushchev (loudly): Yes, this is the kind of competition we want. But your generals say they are so powerful they can destroy us. We can also show you something so that you will know the Russian spirit.
Nixon: You are strong and we are strong. In some ways you are stronger, but in other ways we might be stronger. We are both so strong, not only in weapons but also in will and spirit, that neither should ever put the other in a position where he faces in effect an ultimatum.
Tense and wide-eyed, the scores of officials, security guards and newsmen who were touring the exhibition with Nixon and Khrushchev clustered around the debaters. "I hope the Prime Minister has understood all the implications of what I said," Nixon went on. with an oblique reference to Berlin. "What I mean is that the moment we place either one of these powerful nations, through an ultimatum, in a position where it has no choice but to accept dictation or fight, then you are playing with the most destructive force in the world."
Khrushchev (flushed, wagging a finger near Nixon's face): We too are giants. If you want to threaten, we will answer threat with threat.
Nixon: We never engage in threats.
Khrushchev: You wanted indirectly to threaten me. But we have means at our disposal that can have very bad consequences.
Nixon: We have too.
Khrushchev (in a friendlier tone): We want peace with all other nations, especially America.
Nixon: We also want peace.