35 Years Ago Today, the First McDonald’s Opened in the USSR
On January 31, 1990, the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow to much excitement. This may not sound like a big deal to Americans, but to the residents of the Soviet Union, getting their first outpost of the fast food chain was a HUGE deal, akin to signifying the downfall of the USSR. There were lines around the block of people hoping to get a taste of a Big Mac and fries.
Now, lines around the block were not so unusual for the USSR. I was forced to stand in many myself as a child alongside my parents, waiting for government rations — the longer the line, the better the product at the end. But this was a very different kind of line, borne not of communist rationing, but of curiosity and excitement and a vision of the West.
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Let’s go back to the 1980s and early 1990s for a moment. The Soviet Union had long been anti-American, banning everything from all music by the Beatles to jeans that managed to just appear American in style (my mother got kicked out of her high school political organization over “American-looking” pants, which had the quite dire consequences of keeping her out of the university in our hometown of Chernovtsy, Ukraine). So allowing an American company like McDonald’s was pretty revolutionary, and a sign of what was to come: The total downfall of the USSR.
For more information on this momentous occasion, check out the detailed account on History.com, or the amazing 2003 German comedy Goodbye, Lenin! It’s not about McDonald’s, but rather about a young man (Daniel Brühl) who tries to prevent his mother from learning about the fall of the Berlin Wall after she wakes up from a coma, and it’s a great representation of what was going on during those very volatile years.
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