Once a powerful symbol in Russia, McDonald's withdraws

Two months after the Berlin Wall fell, another powerful symbol opened its doors in the middle of Moscow: a gleaming new McDonald’s.

It was the first American fast-food restaurant to enter the Soviet Union, reflecting the new political openness of the era. For Vlad Vexler, who as a 9-year-old waited in a two-hour line to enter the restaurant near Moscow’s Pushkin Square on its opening day in January 1990, it was a gateway to the utopia he imagined the West to be.

“We thought that life there was magical and there were no problems,” said Vexler, a political philosopher and author who now lives in London.

So it was all the more poignant for Vexler when McDonald’s announced Monday it will sell its 850 Russian stores and exit the market in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. McDonald's said it's the first time in the company's history that it has left a major market.

“The symbolism of McDonald’s leaving, for me, is really about Russia turning into a direction that is a dead end, a direction that won’t offer anything to Russia and won’t allow Russia to offer anything to the world," Vexler said.

McDonald's said it will look for a buyer who will employ its 62,000 Russian workers, and will continue to pay them until a sale is finalized.

McDonald’s entry into the Soviet Union began with a chance meeting. In 1976, McDonald’s loaned some buses to organizers of the 1980 Moscow Olympics who were touring Olympic venues in Montreal, Canada. George Cohon, then the head of McDonald’s in Canada, took the visitors to McDonald’s as part of the tour. That same night, the group began discussing ways to open a McDonald’s in the Soviet Union.

Fourteen years later, after Soviet laws loosened and McDonald’s built relationships with local farmers, the first McDonald’s opened in downtown...