Twenty years ago, McDonald's opened its first store in Russia. The appearance of the Golden Arches in Moscow's Pushkin Square predated the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it should have been seen as a harbinger of the end of the autarkic Soviet economic model. The company marked the landmark event — Jan. 31 was the exact day — with a birthday party and a "buy one get one free deal" along with the announcement of plans for ambitious expansion in the Russian market. Russian economic officials must hope that other companies will follow McDonald's lead as the country struggles to recover from its worst economic performance in decades.
When the first McDonald's franchise opened in 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev was still in power and the Cold War superpower standoff still defined international politics. Glasnost and perestroika were poorly understood — and bitterly contested — concepts. While McDonald's was not the first Western company in the Soviet Union — Pepsi was available for years before — raising the Golden Arches signaled that Russia was open for business.
The breakthrough was not easy. Investors hoped the first McDonald's would open in time for the 1980 Moscow Olympics when they began discussions with Soviet bureaucrats in 1976. Instead, 14 years of tough negotiations preceded the opening of the first restaurant. Finding employees and materials that would meet McDonald's exacting standards was thought to be beyond reach. And then there were Russian tastes: Would they be satisfied by Big Macs and fries?