When the Soviet Union Paid Pepsi in Warships

When USS Thomas S. Gates and USS Kauffman became the first U.S. ships to visit Sevastopol in 1989, they treated the Soviets to hot dogs and Pepsi.

Pepsi was so popular with Soviets that the USSR once traded 17 surplus submarines to pay for their supply. On April 9, 1990, American newspapers reported on an unusual deal. Pepsi had come to a three billion dollar agreement with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had long traded Stolichnaya vodka in return for Pepsi concentrate. But this time, Pepsi got 10 Soviet ships.

This wasn’t the first time that Pepsi sold soft drinks in return for a flotilla. The previous year, the company even received warships. This situation—a soft drink conglomerate briefly owning a fairly large navy—was the unusual result of an unusual situation: a communist government buying a product of capitalism from the country it considered its greatest rival. The submarines had a fiberglass coating over their sonar domes, referred to them as glass-nosed. Rumors circulated that this was the beginning of their policy that became known as Glasnost.