{"id":1416,"date":"2022-06-18T08:40:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2022-06-16T12:48:01","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T19:48:01","slug":"moscow-30-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/moscow-30-years-later.html","title":{"rendered":"Moscow – 30 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In reaction to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a> last February, many multi-national companies with business in Russia announced intentions to suspended or closed<\/a> their operations. This week, for example, McDonald\u2019s divested locations reopened<\/a> sans the Big Mac. Just a side story related to another unfolding tragedy. Too much of the news these days gives one pause. Yet, the story of McDonald\u2019s closing in Russia focused my attention in a particular way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An op-ed article – McDonald’s exit from Russia ends a hopeful era<\/a> \u2013 notes the symbolism. It was the opening of the first McDonald\u2019s location in Moscow that signaled the transition of another era, the end of the Cold War<\/a>. The article includes a photo from the opening of that first outpost in Moscow\u2019s Pushkin Square in January 1990.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been to that very McDonald’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AFP via Bloomberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the 18th<\/sup> of June 1992 – just 6 months after Mikhail Gorbachev resigned<\/a> and Boris Yeltsin became the president <\/a>of the Russian Federation<\/a> \u2013 I, as part of a high school travel program<\/a>, was in Moscow. In the notes from my travel journal of that day I scribbled, \u201cwe stopped by the Moscow McDonald\u2019s between dinner + Red Square.\u201d Apparently, the irony of seeing Lenin\u2019s Tomb<\/a> with his preserved body and going to Mickey D’s on the same day wasn\u2019t worth commenting on at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Personal photos of the McDonald’s in Moscow’s Pushkin Square, June 1992. Note the Soviet flag, the hammer and sickle, has been removed from under the golden arches.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A member of our group had a VHS-based handheld camcorder, a big deal in 1992.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Just prior to arriving in Moscow our travel group spent a few days in Washington D.C. to prep for our month-long travels in Europe1<\/a><\/sup>. In a bit of cosmic chance, Boris Yeltsin was also \u201cin town\u201d for a summit with George H.W. Bush<\/a> on nuclear warhead reduction and economic aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Security screen between the North Lawn and the White House, Yeltsin’s limo and Boris Yeltsin surrounded by a security detail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Personal photo of “Yeltsin’s White House<\/a>” where, 10 months prior Yeltsin stood on a tank defying a coup attempt by communist hardliners<\/a>. The same parliamentary building 15 months later, photographed by Christopher Morris<\/a>, after Yeltsin ordered the building to be shelled during Russia’s constitutional crisis.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In fact, during our trip Russia was experiencing hyperinflation<\/a>. That June the exchange rate, which fluctuated rapidly each day \u2013 averaged around 1 U.S. dollar for 100 rubles2<\/a><\/sup>. The net result for us was, while we had been briefed to bring Western consumer goods with us (e.g. jeans<\/a>) to trade with, at most street markets Muscovites showed more interest in our dollars than our jeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alas, the recent past has shown that the collective optimism of the 1990s formed from witnessing the end of history<\/a> was but a false sense of security. The seeds of trouble for this new millennium, from 9\/11 to Putin’s Russia took root while we all imagined a better world. If People to People<\/a>, the program I traveled with 30 years ago, is any indication, as they too have suspended all operations for 2022, \u201cdue to unprecedented international issues.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People to People patch, Lenin’s Tomb and a park with derelict Soviet-era monuments<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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1<\/a><\/sup> In 30 days we traveled to Moscow, Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, London and points in between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2<\/a><\/sup> A Wikipedia article says, \u201cfrom July 1992, when the ruble first could be legally exchanged for United States dollars, to October 1995, the rate of exchange between the ruble and the dollar declined from 144 rubles per US$1 to around 5,000 per US$1.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In reaction to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine last February, many multi-national companies with business in Russia announced intentions to suspended or closed their operations. This week, for example, McDonald\u2019s divested locations reopened sans the Big Mac. Just a side story related to another unfolding tragedy. Too much of the news these days gives one pause. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,144],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":78,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}