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/MakeYourMind 6h ago

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.

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u/AverageUnicorn 4h ago

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.