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The Pepsi Navy: Seventeen Submarines, Shoe-Wax Fizz, and a Coin That Converts

Episode 23 of The Office 360 Unfiltered. Long walk. Unique true story.

1959, Moscow, Kitchen Debate. Donald Kendall gets Khrushchev to drink Pepsi on camera. One cup New York water, one cup Moscow water. The Premier calls the Soviet mix very refreshing. His son said it smelled like shoe wax. The photo goes around the world. 1972: Pepsi is first major American soda into the USSR. Exclusive. Coke locked out. The ruble will not convert, so the tab is vodka — Stolichnaya out, syrup in — for years.

Spring 1989: vodka is not enough. Moscow pays in decommissioned steel. Seventeen attack submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, a destroyer. Pepsi is the middleman. Norway takes the hulls for scrap. For a paperwork minute a cola brand sits on the navy list. Kendall to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft: we are disarming the Soviet Union faster than you are. Then the boats are washing machines. The fleet was an IOU with a periscope.

Followers that will not buy are vodka. A clip is a submarine on a spreadsheet. Four people, Lisbon to New York, build a door that takes a coin you can spend. Three clicks. A buy button that buys.

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