McDonald’s opened the first restaurant in the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1990.
The Pushkin Square restaurant opened on January 31, 1990, after years of negotiations and preparation. It was developed through a joint venture involving McDonald’s Canada and the Moscow city government. The opening attracted enormous attention, with thousands of people waiting to buy hamburgers, fries, and other menu items.
The restaurant was notable not only as a business launch but also as a highly visible example of changing economic and cultural relations during the final years of the Soviet Union. McDonald’s had to develop local supply systems to meet its standards for ingredients and food production.
This event is sometimes mixed up with the chain’s first location outside the United States, which opened in Canada in 1967. Moscow was the first McDonald’s in the Soviet Union, not the first international McDonald’s overall.