Three months later, those who love the most popular fast food in Moscow and its province can now return to McDonald’s and enjoy their Big Mac or their favorite snack. But the restaurant will no longer be called McDonald’s and its best-known hamburger, although it continues to say “eat me”, will have another name.
The American multinational closed its 850 restaurants in Russia in March due to the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine. Last month he found a solution: after more than three decades in the country, he sold the business to Siberian businessman Alexánder Góvor. Today Sunday comes the reopening.
The change of ownership, logo and names is an indicator of what is happening in Russia. That the Big Mac disappears is a sign that Russia is de-Westernizing. Perhaps the most striking for the general public
It was Alexander Pushkin in the 19th century who wrote in his poem The Bronze Horseman that Peter the Great had opened a window to Europe two centuries earlier. The phrase is repeated every time the emperor is remembered, the 350th anniversary of whose birth this week has been celebrated. Pedro I ventilated Russia with the winds that came from the continent. But he did not leave the window barred and, as in other times in history, it is closing again.
In the 15 old McDonald’s in Moscow and its suburbs that are open today, the typical golden arches are no longer there. Góvor promised to change the names of his dishes and the logo. The minimalist design of the new banner represents two French fries and a hamburger on a green background.
The goodbye to the American multinational is quite a symbol, perhaps of the end of an era, just as it was in 1990, when it opened its first restaurant in Pushkin Square in Moscow. With the dying USSR, capitalism and mass consumption arrived.
Today McDonald’s is just one example. But there are many more. Since the end of February, nearly a thousand international companies have announced withdrawal from the Russian market, cessation of investments and supplies or transfer of their businesses. There are manufacturers of computer and communications equipment, technology companies, car manufacturers, banks, manufacturers of products, services or financial companies. Among the last to have said “Do svidániya”, this week the American provider of computer hardware and software IBM or the Catalan group Roca.
The West is further and further away. There are no direct commercial planes anymore, you can’t organize vacations with Booking or Airbnb. Boeing or Airbus interrupted technical service and supplies of spare parts to Russian airlines. Visa and Mastercard stopped operating, the most important banks are disconnected from the Swift payment system. Ikea furniture is no longer in fashion. Netflix, Animal Planet or Discovery services do not work on Russian screens. In the bars and restaurants, foreign alcohol reserves will soon run out… the list is endless and would not fit in this chronicle. In fact, more companies may join while the crisis continues, despite the losses that this entails for them, 59,000 million dollars in total according to The Wall Street Journal.
But the new Russian nationalism tries to minimize the impact. Even in USSR times there were limits. Sergei Shelin illustrated it in a column in the electronic newspaper Rosbalt. In the late 1940s, the political establishment wanted to ban the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics to show that they were not dependent on the West. But the physicists who worked on the atomic bomb convinced the authorities that this should not happen “because with ‘jokes’ you cannot build super weapons.”
Also now voices have been heard to nationalize the companies that close in Russia. For now, it has remained in the possibility of applying an external administration in necessary cases. The oligarch Vladimir Potanin, owner of the world’s largest producer of palladium and nickel, Nornickel, even warned that extreme measures could return the country to 1917.
In fact, it is preferred that, as far as possible, if the West leaves, substitutes are found so that the population does not notice it too much. We have the case of the departure of the French Renault, in whose old factory the Moscow government wants to revive the old Soviet Moskvich cars. The Ochakovo beverage company launched new soft drinks in May to take the place left by Coca-Cola, Fanta or Sprite. Or even McDonald’s themselves.
The hamburger and the two fries in the new logo are arranged in such a way that they resemble an “M”. So if you travel to Russia in the future and feel like having a Big Mac, ask for McDonald’s, even if it’s called something else, everyone will know where to go.
