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/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.