The confrontation between two systems

A popcorn machine and a neon advert in the West, a single-frequency radio and a Communist Party card in the East. An evocation of two worlds colliding, daily life and propaganda, but also protest and oppression.

Two blocks - two worlds come face to face

After the Allied victory over Germany in 1945, the two superpowers of the time came face to face. On one side American democracy and on the other, the Soviet empire.

The Cold War meant that the great alliance between the US and USSR was well and truly over. For over 40 years, two political systems, two very different conceptions of the world would clash, admittedly indirectly, but always with the risk of triggering World War III, with the atomic bomb to hand.

Daily life and propaganda

Drawing on powerful propaganda machines, both systems advocated the superiority of their political and economic model, while criticizing that of the other.

USA/USSR: culture, propaganda, daily life, the race for records, the space race, politics, etc. These new displays explore various aspects of life in the two blocks during the Cold War through a multitude of objects and archives from the time.

Upside-down Trabant and Lincoln Continental fixed to the ceiling, a cascade of objects illustrate the consumer societies of the two systems from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the center of these exhibits, visitors can also watch propaganda films from each block on two screens. Propaganda and counter propaganda: dive into the thick of the Cold War.

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