Tony Talks History
The Time PEPSI Bought A NAVY
In 1989 the Soviet Union ran out of money and paid Pepsi in warships. Seventeen submarines, a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer, in exchange for soft drink.
It really happened. Almost everything you have heard about it is wrong.
The numbers in this video
17Submarines Pepsi was reported to have taken as payment in spring 1989, along with a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer. They went to a Norwegian ship breaker for scrap.Source: Foreign Policy, 27 November 2021
$150,000The reported price per submarine, around this much. The figure comes from a New York Times column.Source: The New York Times, May 1989, as cited by History.com and MEL Magazine
7thWhere 17 old submarines would have put Pepsi among the world's submarine fleets, tied with India. It was never the sixth largest navy.Source: Foreign Policy, 27 November 2021
1MCases of Stolichnaya vodka Pepsi was selling in America a year by 1980. The vodka was how Pepsi got paid.Source: MEL Magazine
1BServings of Pepsi that Soviet citizens were drinking a year by the late 1980s, roughly.Source: History.com, UPI and Atlas Obscura
$3BThe deal Pepsi and the Soviet government signed in April 1990, set to run to the year 2000.Source: UPI, 9 April 1990
Every number has a source
Chapters
- 0:00Seventeen Submarines
- 1:231959: The Sip
- 3:341960s: The Rouble
- 5:311972: The Vodka
- 8:151979: The Boycott
- 10:281989: The Scrap
- 13:281990: The Tankers
- 15:251991: The Collapse
- 17:28The Discount
- 18:39What Happened Next
What we left out
Claims we found and could not stand behind, so they are not in the video.
That the ships made Pepsi the sixth largest navy on earth. It is false, and the video corrects it: the fleet was nowhere near the top 25 navies in the world.
A price of $50,000 per submarine. That is a different source quoting the going market rate. The video uses the $150,000 reported by the New York Times and says where it came from.
A Financial Times report from April 1989 of a $2.6 billion deal for up to 85 ships. It is a different source describing a different deal, so the video does not use it.
