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

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

I like your analogy about the significance of McDonald's at the time. Regarding Ukraine, I still can't even believe what is happening there. I was just speaking to my Ukrainian friend on Skype yesterday. So sad. :((

[vasylkivska.livejournal.com]

It's not that it was significant but it was so much unlike anything you knew in a country where uniqueness was hard to come by. The Martians were selling the crappiest possible food found in their universe but you had no way of knowing because you were not familiar with their food and it wasn't like anything you ever tasted before. There is a value in uniqueness that is shared universally. When we lived in Tokyo there was only one Krispy Kream shop. The line in front of it never reduced to less than 45 minutes of waiting. I could never understand why the Japanese felt compelled to wait for 45 minutes to get a box of doughnuts and a coffee, but they did.