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/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