Paying tribute to an invader
Ksenia Oskina was starving by the time she got to the front of the hours-long line for the cool new American restaurant. She’d never heard of the place before, so she peered through its glass windows to see what people were eating, hoping for a hint at what to order.
Oskina curiously observed the thin slabs of meat and sliced vegetables between buns of bread. When it was her turn, she nervously asked the cashier for a Big Mac because she wanted the fabulous box it came in. She saved that carton and her drink cup and brought it to work the next day to show her co-workers, telling them stories about how the employees were smiling and wiped tables after guests left.
“I used that Big Mac box for a long time and put my sandwich in there instead of a lunch box,” Oskina said. “I’d clean it, dry it on the heater and then use it again.”
Oskina was one of the more than 30,000 to attend the Russian debut of McDonald’s 30 years ago. As seminal a moment it was in her life, it was an even bigger one for the Soviet Union, opening a new window to western civilization through fast food.
The Berlin Wall fell nearly three months earlier, and on Jan. 31, 1990, the height of president Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika economic reforms, the arrival of the golden arches on downtown Moscow’s Pushkin Square signalled that the communist Soviet Union was inching toward capitalism and open for business to western brands. The Soviet Union dissolved less than two years later.
The Pizza Hut chain came to the Soviet Union a few months after McDonald’s in 1990, and Gorbachev appeared in a commercial for Pizza Hut in1997. In the 60-second spot, Gorbachev is eating at the restaurant as a Russian family a table away argues about his legacy — freedom and opportunity versus political and economic instability. They finally agree to toast him when the matriarch says, “Because of him, we have Pizza Hut.”
McDonald’s and Pizza Hut “changed the restaurant industry in Russia,” said Mikhail Kostin, a Moscowbased food critic. “That’s when burgers and pizza were introduced to the Soviet people.”
The McDonald’s on Pushkin Square planned to commemorate its 30th birthday by offering some menu items at the same cost they were in 1990 — three rubles, which is the equivalent of a nickel. But with Russia concerned about a possible coronavirus outbreak, the promotion was cancelled, at the Moscow government’s suggestion.
The location was still busier than usual at lunchtime on Jan. 31 as people paused to take photos in front of two ice sculptures commissioned for the occasion. The line wasn’t well out the door like it was 30 years ago, but customers were rewarded with coupons to buy a Big Mac for three rubles at a later date. > MOSCOW