In these photos, post-Communist Russians are loving the American lifestyle
From bread lines to Big Mac lines
Russia and Russians are perplexing to Americans. Our media-made conception is usually bleak, monochromatic, and cold as hell. And don’t they wait in line a lot over there?
The dissolution of the U.S.S.R. left Russia ripe for visual reinterpretation. With the Cold War over we wanted to see who these freshly freed former Communists were—and the news media was ready to show us with pictures of them buying all our shit. Proving that given the choice Russians would revert to the default capitalism for which all societies yearn. They were just like us… only weaker, colder, and wearing tracksuits.
We started to see pictures depicting Russia not as the complex place it is, but in comparison to our own domestic self image. The 1990 opening of Moscow’s first McDonald’s was an easy symbol for Western media to glom onto, as were other iterations of a nascent consumer culture “emerging” after decades of Soviet dormancy. Subjects finally had the choice between Snickers and blue jeans, pizza or cocktails. The “New Russians” phenomenon further reinforced an image of a class of nouveau riche embracing their innate capitalist tendencies.
Even representations of diverse experience became a means for underlining the split between socialism and capitalism, and pictures from the time often present quirky mashups of Soviet clichés with emblems of Westernization. The implication is that Russians were on a path that would eventually, inevitably, lead them to middle class bliss.
All of this, we are told, is preferable to the anemic grayness that proceeded. Russians are always so depressed and moody. They should really try smiling more. Or drinking more Coke.
