When I saw signs for Burger King, Subway, KFC, McDonald’s in Russia I thought about how we export the worst of our culture–it contaminates everything. But when I was in St. Petersburg, I read an article by Mitya Kushelevich in the St. Petersburg Times, reprinted from The Calvert Journal. It gave me a different perspective. He was writing about the government’s closure of McDonald’s, allegedly for sanitation reasons, but curiously synchronous with the West’s recent imposition of sanctions. This first McDonald’s in Russia is in a prime Moscow location. I’ll quote from the article at length:
“Everything about this particular branch of the American fast-food giant was iconic for a person born in Soviet Russia. Just as St. Petersburg was once considered our ‘window to Europe,’ this restaurant was our ‘window to the world.’ Continue reading “A taste of freedom”