Return to the 90s and the first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union: when the air of change brought the smell of hamburger

It’s Wednesday. On January 31, 1990. Hundreds of people line up around the first McDonald’s restaurant in the Soviet Union, on Pushkin Square in Moscow. The expectation is maximum. They do not believe that there are hamburgers for everyone.

A door opens. Literally and also symbolically. is the openness to capitalism. Winds of change are blowing and that particular air today smells like a hamburger.

The Big Mac it only costs 3 rubles (about 4 euro cents), compared to more than 100 rubles (1.50 euros) now. People keep the ice cream boxes and spoons as souvenirs. By the end of the day, some 30,000 people had passed through the establishment.

Neither him Extreme cold nor the waiting hours they discouraged them. They wanted to taste a piece of that enemy that had been fought for decades.

A symbol of capitalism

More than 27,000 citizens sent in a job application but only about 600 were chosen. Excellent customer service and a permanent smile were sought. Something very different from what was experienced in other businesses in the country.

That first McDonald’s was considered as a luxury restaurant by the hundreds of people who continued to visit it and it became a place of pilgrimage from other Soviet cities. Just two years later, with the opening of more Golden Arch venues in Moscow, the queues at this iconic restaurant dwindled.

Finally the average Soviet citizen could see what life was like beyond the Iron Curtain. People had heard so many things about Western culture without being able to get close, that they went crazy when the famous hamburger chain arrived in Moscow.

It was him first foreign restaurant to open in the Soviet Union. Only a year later, in 1991, the total rupture of the USSR would come.

Now a new Iron Curtain rises. It has been 31 years since the opening of that first McDonald’s in Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought multiple economic consequences.

McDonald’s, an American cultural symbol, has announced its temporary closure in Russia. 850 stores and 62,000 employees are affectedyes The chain will continue to pay their salaries, however. They send a message to the world: they cannot “ignore the unnecessary suffering caused to Ukraine”.

For many years it was believed that two countries with golden arches would never go to war

“The economic dimensions that this war is taking are so brutal I am surprised that they have not been planned before,” observes journalist Carlos Santos in Al Rojo Vivo.

“Putin is destroying two countries, Ukraine and the Russian economy. For many years it was believed that two countries with golden arches would never go to war,” he adds. Pedro Rodríguez, professor of International Relations Comillas-ICAD. Now that theory has been shattered. Two countries with a wealthy middle class that enjoys Western culture are at war.

However, Europe’s sanctions for Putin’s attack on Ukraine are not being felt by the Russian population for now. A) Yes A Russian citizen explains it in this video, historian and sociologist. Now it remains to be seen if the announced departure of McDonalds along with other great symbols such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks or Zara, stir more consciences among the Russian population.