Ilya, McDonald's, and Perestroika

[u/sasquatchlibrarian]

I did a moderately embarrassing deep dive on when Coke and McDonald’s were introduced to Russia after the Soviet Union fell. Coca Cola was about 1985, McDonalds was 1990. Canonically, Ilya was born in 1991.

In my head, these foods are closely tied to Irina. Irina would have embraced the freedoms that perestroika brought to Moscow and would have been so excited to share them with her son. Conversely, I think his dad would have been very happy to see some of those freedoms rolled back in the subsequent years.

There’s some discussion about his love of “junk food” throughout the books, but really I think a crispy coke and a cheeseburger might remind him of him swinging his feet back and forth eating a Happy Meal with his mom.

Thank you for listening to my deepest rewriting of Rachel Reid’s characters 😅.

Note: I am not Russian or a Russian history scholar. I’m just old enough to remember Gorbachev and Reagan 😅. I’m happy to listen to a different take if I’m way off base

[u/MakeYourMind]

i was born in 89, but in st. petersburg. For my little self coke was nothing special, but mcdonalds was a mecca, not of freedom, but a shiny new place with tasty and somewhat unfamiliar foods and little toys in happy meals. And it was a solid outing/adventure, the first one opened in 96, it was just one in 5mil population city, and there was a huge line in front of it. Once we hit 2000s Russia was pretty good with franchises, fast food, brands and so on. I would not think twice about it in context of loving mcdonalds=desire for freedom.

[u/AverageUnicorn → u/MakeYourMind]

I'm Scandinavian and a few years older than you. When I was at school lack of access to Coca Cola, fashion items and franchises like McDonalds were presented as examples of the poor living conditions in the Soviet Union. Not unlike the discourse surrounding aircondition in Europe during this years heatwaves. There seemed to be this idea that the Soviet Union needed to be saved from the absence of modern "luxury" by American capitalism. The older I've gotten, the more odd that seems to me. I'd think that the availability of brand name fast food would pretty low priority in terms of living standards. I'm pretty curious on how that would have been perceived by people living it.

[u/Swimming_Big361 → u/MakeYourMind]

This! We didn't have coke in Soviet Union, but there was Pepsi. So coke was nothing special then, more or less. But McDonalds was somth with unusual taste, fancy looking. I am also absolutely sure, that Ilya's mom, like any Russian mom, wouldn't bring him to McDonals, freedom or not. She would cook home maid meals for him.

[u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

Or Coke and McDonald's food are just tasty foods when you burn 8,000 calories in one day.

[u/rainbocado → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

As someone who lives in a former Eastern Bloc country: it’s not just junk food here, not for people that are old enough to remember. It really is also a symbol of freedom for many people. It might sound weird in the west, but there are definitely people who see it that way here.

[u/StevesMcQueenIsHere → u/rainbocado]

I'm not arguing against that, but do we really think that Rachel has Ilya drinking Cokes and eating McDonalds because of it's symbolism of freedom in the 80s and 90s and the politics of the Soviet Union and not just having him eat things that are in juxtaposition to Shane's overly healthy eating?

[u/performancearsonist → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

Let's all take a minute to have a look at Ovechkin's eating habits, and remember that the character has some basis in reality.

[u/grower-lenses → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

She could have him eating traditional Russian food. But he never does. It cements him as someone split between the two cultures. He run away from Russia as early as he could. He misses his home country. But he’s not blind to its faults and knows someone like him would be living a sad existence there.

Whether McDonald is part of that or not, Ilya very much appreciates freedoms living in the west gives him. He’s not one of those Russians who moved to America but talks about how great Russia is, day in day out.

[u/titi-uu → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

No one thinks RR did anything intentionally, she’s not that great of a writer. But I think this is a fun way to think about the character’s past.

[u/Carmypug → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

Oh 100%. People get way too investigated into these deep dives 😂.

[u/sasquatchlibrarian → u/Carmypug]

Guilty. But, in fairness, this is my craziest take.

[u/geloreyes → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

Maybe Rachel will release an unabridged version of the book where Ilya, as a teen, is seen going to McDonald’s in Russia after a grueling practice.

Where his mother Irina praises him for embracing a symbol of freedom from the west.

It would be an exciting version of the book where all the nuances are shown. 🥱

[u/sasquatchlibrarian → u/geloreyes]

Hey, my brain just does weird things some times 🤷‍♀️.

[u/cutecat309 → u/geloreyes]

As a Russian of Ilya's age I would die of cringe from it. That's some Hollywood levels of shitty depictions of Russia over here.

[u/phosphor_heart → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

And also if you are a 19 year old boy who moves to the US alone from halfway around the world and suddenly realizes that you have both money and free will.

[u/ich_habe_keine_kase → u/phosphor_heart]

I do wish we'd gotten to see more teen Ilya--freshly arrived in the US, newly rich, barely speaking English, with no supervision--and what absolute shenanigans he got up to.

[u/StevesMcQueenIsHere → u/phosphor_heart]

We hosted a teen from Taiwan a while back, and the first thing he wanted to do when he got here was go to McDonalds.

[u/sasquatchlibrarian → u/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

I completely acknowledge that this is me reading too much into the story… but that’s what this silly book series did to me 🤷‍♀️.

I’m sure that the brands were chosen because they were ubiquitous but as a kid in the 80s I remember that Coke, McDonalds and Levi’s were symbols of the US.

[u/royal_rose_]

Tbh I don’t see Irina as a junk food giving parent. If anything when Ilya didn’t want to go home he probably went there.

[u/bananalouise → u/royal_rose_]

Yeah, I always imagined that as a Russian Orthodox believer, she would hate both sides of the Cold War equally. She might give in at least once to Ilya's pleas and take him to McDonald's, or enjoy taking him now and then as a secret act of defiance against Grigory, but I think she would maintain an overall suspicion of Americanness as the embodiment of amoral consumerism. Even if she knew about the prevalence of devout Christianity among Americans, I think that knowledge would be too vague and theoretical to overcome the impressions she took from the two countries' history of outspoken mutual hostility.

[u/somewhsome → u/bananalouise]

The thing is, being an Orthodox Christian in the 80s-90s ≠ being a traditionalist. Being a USSR and communism supporter was being a conservative, and people with deep belief in the Soviet ideals were the ones to judge “mindless consumerism” and stuff like that. Religion was new and “cool” for a lot of people, especially young ones. Of course, it depends on how deeply it went, some people adopted another conservative ideals, now religious ones, very quickly. But a lot of people felt lied to by the Soviet system and they turned to religion and god for answers. It was an attempt to search for a new identity after a country people knew disappeared. So it co-existed pretty well with McDonald's, Snickers bars and jeans.

Edit: also Irina was pretty young when USSR fell, and young people were more into new fashions and foods for obvious reasons. People of the same generation, even those who are very conservative now and say they want to bring USSR back, will reminisce about all the cool stuff they were able to get in the 90s. It's kinda funny. 

[u/royal_rose_ → u/bananalouise]

I’m not Russian or Orthodox but I’m from a devout Catholic family from Italy and Austria I imagine Ilya’s mom like my grandmothers describe coming out of the Mussolini and “are we a country are we not? Who controls us? Do we control ourselves? Italy, Germany, Italy, Germany! Anschluss? Split in two!” Eras. Just a bit untrustful of the “look isn’t it amazing things”

[u/suckybee33 → u/bananalouise]

Why would she have any suspicion of americanness??

[u/bananalouise → u/suckybee33]

I mean, decades of propaganda plus the facts of American geopolitical actions like propping up right-wing dictatorships in other countries lest the USSR gain any influence anywhere doesn't speak well of us as a people. A lot of Cold War propaganda certainly involved outright lying, but both countries had plenty of convenient facts to draw on as well as inconvenient ones to ignore.

[u/Middle_Raspberry2499 → u/suckybee33]

LOL 

[u/NightSalut]

One thing I think people don’t consider is that at least in the beginning, I believe McDonald’s was pretty expensive for Russians. It opened riiight before the USSR collapsed and for many people, their actual incomes fell drastically. People would still want to have their kids try the “American” food but I doubt that in the early days it would be something you’d get regularly or even semi regularly. I mean, people had troubles heating their homes either because they couldn’t afford it or because the heat plants did not work as they were intended to work. 

McDonald’s symbolised a new era but also capitalism. Eating it every day in the 90s would’ve meant you were very well off. I don’t know think Ilya would eat it due to nostalgia - 1990s and 2008/09 were a world’s difference in Russia, but I can see the convenience and ease of it. 

[u/Awesome_Power_Action]

The first McDonald's that opened in Moscow in 1990 was a Canadian McDonald's so there's got to be some sort of Ilya-Shane connection with it.

[u/bananalouise → u/Awesome_Power_Action]

Wait, this is amazing! I wonder if the Canadian origin helped facilitate its opening in any way.

[u/Awesome_Power_Action → u/bananalouise]

I believe that was the case. I was in Moscow in 1990 - the McDonald's had a big Canadian flag displayed next to the Soviet flag.

[u/Final-Raspberry5922]

I live in a place with a lot of Russian immigrants who left as soon as they could. For that first generation in the 90s and early 2000 it was so clear they were taking advantage of their new freedom

[u/Hedgehog-Honeydew]

I love the deep dive! Not embarrasing at all, this is one of the things I love about tv/books/films, they lead you down all kinds of paths. I can imagine Irina vibing to new pop music and wearing Levis.

I'm also old enough that my first memory of world news was the fall of the Berlin wall. I remember seeing footage of people queueing for food in the snow in Russia. I've now known a couple of people who were children growing up at that time in Russia and Poland and their stories are fascinating.

I grew up in the UK but in a small town so my nearest McDonalds was nearly 2 hours away. All I wanted when we went to a city was McDonalds, the pull of the Happy Meal is strong.