Perestroika and 1st Russian McDonald's

These days it's hard to believe that thousands of people would be willing to stand out in the cold for hours on end just for a Big Mac. But when the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad.
The first McDonald's was opened in the Soviet Union on Jan. 31, 1990. Thousands of Muscovites flocked to the new burger joint, forming lines several kilometers long in the center of Moscow on Pushkinskaya Square.