After the massive importation of American equipment brought about by the Lend-Lease agreements between 1942 and 1945, the Soviets reproduced aircraft such as the Boeing B-29, which became the Tupolev Tu-4, while automobiles such as the Pobieda and Volga were replicas of those from Detroit. In the early 1970s, designer Raymond Loewy was officially invited to design the new Moskvitch.
In the meantime, Khrushchev's Russia had resumed its avowed observation of America. Architects and journalists took part in in-depth study trips, bringing back books that were widely distributed.
Like a Tantalus torture inflicted on a Soviet public frustrated with consumerism, the 1959 American National Exhibition showcased American techniques and, above all, consumer goods. Khrushchev and Nixon discussed the comparative benefits of the two systems, before a series of thematic exhibitions and publications spread the image of works by Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra or Eero Saarinen, whose forms were promptly recycled by Russian professionals.
In recent decades, programs for shopping malls, office buildings and certain public edifices also capture their attention, before the focus on modern archetypes is replaced by an intense curiosity for the generation of Louis I. Kahn's generation and for Robert Venturi's ironic approach, which would find a particular echo in those areas of relative freedom that would be the Baltic States until the collapse of the USSR.
