McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Moscow in 1990, making it the company’s first location in a former Soviet republic.
The Moscow opening was a major international branding event. The restaurant opened on 31 January 1990 in Pushkin Square, during a period of political and economic change in the Soviet Union. McDonald’s presented its familiar Golden Arches, menu, uniforms, and service style in a market where the brand had previously been unavailable.
The opening attracted extraordinary public attention and long queues. It is often remembered as a symbolic example of an international consumer brand entering the Soviet market shortly before the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The location was not McDonald’s first restaurant outside the United States—that milestone came much earlier—but it became one of the most famous international openings in the company’s branding history.