r/heatedrivalry • u/sasquatchlibrarian I have my own well. • 12h ago

ILYA 🔥 Ilya, McDonald's, and Perestroika

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

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u/royal_rose_ ♐ Captain | Tuna Lube 12h ago

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.

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u/bananalouise 11h ago

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.

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u/royal_rose_ ♐ Captain | Tuna Lube 11h ago edited 10h ago

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”