Symbols of America

[peacetraveler22]

For the past few weeks, Ilya Varlamov has published posts incorporating photos from Moscow in the late 1980's - early 90's. I love these! Amazing to see how the country looked right before the collapse of the USSR. In today's post, I saw this photo from 1990. A massive queue to enter the first McDonald's in Moscow! I can't imagine such a scene, or how this fast food chain symbolized so much to people at that time. In 1990, I was 17. A senior in high school, getting ready to graduate and enter university, and closely following events overseas.

What other places, items and things did Soviet citizens associate with America before the collapse? My aunt visited Russia in the early 1980's, and she told me stories about locals asking her for bubble gum and wanting to buy her Levi's, straight off her body. This is no joke.

This is what makes Russia so fascinating to me - very rich and diverse history, constantly shifting and changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Not sure how most Russians feel about the current direction in which Russia is moving...I hope you feel for the better, because it's depressing and sad to live in a place where you feel absolutely no hope or prospect for the future. I have never once felt this way about my life in America...

Comments

[kremlin-curant.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was amazing seeing the American staples in the Russia in those times. But all in Moscow, never in the remote places like Ivanovo where I lived.
In late 80-th Russian people stopped trusting communist's propaganda and lot of Russians got loved the American way of life.
Unfortunately Russian president Boris Yeltsin got moronic onto the end of his last term in the Office and when NATO started the war against Miloshevich clique he used it as a pretext for reviving the old-style anti-american sentiment.
Now under mr. Putin's rule this sentiment got much uglier and abnormal.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

I think one of the main McDonald's in Moscow recently closed. I remember seeing some posts about this on LJ. Unfortunately, I believe you're right that a very strong anti-Western sentiment is encouraged in Russian media. This makes me sad, that relations between the countries are going backward rather than forward. Apparently a lot of Russians are completely okay with this, as Putin's approval ratings remain high.

[yarowind.livejournal.com]

>>I think one of the main McDonald's in Moscow recently closed.

Recently open again:)

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

Thanks, several readers told me this. But I wasn't sure why it closed for three months?

[yarowind.livejournal.com]

The official version - violations of sanitary norms.

One problem with Soviet propaganda...

[xpo-xpo-xpo.livejournal.com]

Many people found now that Soviet propaganda was relatively truthful talking about the West. Surely not everything was truth but at some moment it was impossible even to believe there is unemployment in US :) Now we see it is. And we see that Soviet propaganda was right in this matter.

Probably this problem arose because people saw how propaganda lies about Soviet live - and one may conclude there is no reason to believe in liar's words :) Unfortunately, liars lie all the time only in some textbook problems :)