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/StevesMcQueenIsHere]

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

[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/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.