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

[alsh4ka.livejournal.com]

Jeans, bubble-gum, coca-cola. Tom&Jerry, Backto the Future and Star Wars)))

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

Back to the Future - it's one of my favorite American film series. :) I wish there was a real time machine! It would be so cool. :)

[harlampiev.livejournal.com]

Do you remember, like we should be on-dressed in next year?=)))

All the Sovier children liked Freddy!

[xpo-xpo-xpo.livejournal.com]

"Nightmare on Elm St" was the movie every Russian schoolboy watched those times :)

Re: All the Sovier children liked Freddy!

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

Scary! :)) And what did the Soviet girls watch?

At those times I wasn't interested in girls too much.

[xpo-xpo-xpo.livejournal.com]

Many years since that I played university soccer team. My fifth year in the university was the year when I missed a game for a first time having some tea with a girl. So I know that modern girls watch Avatar in 3D but at those times... The only thing I remember, they played porn-cards with boys (no later than 7th year in school: I left that school after 7th year).

Re: At those times I wasn't interested in girls too much.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

Porn cards? What's that? Sounds scandalous! :)))

Just playing cards.

[xpo-xpo-xpo.livejournal.com]

As usual, four suits, 9 cards per suit (most Russian games employ only 9 or even 8 cards per suit), porn pictures on the face side.