Revisionist Mcdonalds :shocked-pikachu: ???
Well Gorby sort of had a plan, but it was a terribly naive one. He really thought the liberals would be cool with him being a social democrat, but nope, step aside loser. All or nothing.
For Yeltsin and his cronies, the lack of planning was part of the benefit, they didn't want any of the former bureaucrats or factory directors to be part of the process at all. They just gave every citizen worthless "privatization vouchers" that would entitle you to shares in the new private enterprises but they immediately lost all value because of the economic disaster they caused. Oh and they were unlimitedly transferable, so 90% of people just sold them for cash so they could keep eating. Those who were already rich or had political connections to the new government bought them all up and volia- nearly instantaneous economic oligarchy. All the achievements of October, swept away :lenin-rage:
Why did the Soviet Military go along with this, anyways? Did they really gain that much/anything from all of this?
Well Gorby purged the military leadership of the "hardliners" (actual communists) before he started his reforms. He really thought the left would be a bigger threat than the radical liberal opposition.
He also drastically slashed the military budget and conditions for the soldiers were already poor in the late 80s. The conscription system had been corrupted and many conscripts were abused and used as slave labor. Cutting the budget made these problems worse, and then the Warsaw Pact collapsed and the army lost all their foreign allies.
So by the time stuff starts really falling apart, the Red Army is left disillusioned and directionless. They try to intervene a few times but accomplish little more than shooting some protesters and making everyone angrier. Gorbachev meanwhile refuses to lead, and instead focuses his attention on blaming his subordinates and firing more "hardliners". When the August Coup happens, again Gorby refuses to take leadership or even a stance on it at all, and what's left of the army isn't willing to risk a massacre on behalf of, let's be honest, a desperate last ditch attempt to regain control of the situation.
Afterwards, many soldiers could make chaos very lucrative for themselves by becoming gangsters or running drugs/arms. The death of a nation is so tragic.
And those that did stick around who had some loyalty still left during Chechnya. Deputy Minister of Defense General Boris Gromov resigned, keep in mind he had been VP for the communist party during the 1991 elections
Those that fought back did a poorly planned coup and one of the last defenders of the USSR killed himself upon that being crushed. Sergey Akhromeyev was a truly dedicated communist and is the prime example of the loyal Soviet military man.
"I openly state my position. I support the socialist way of life. If someone attempts to split the country or change its social system by force or other unconstitutional acts, the president and the Soviets can decide to use force to ensure the protection of our motherland. Unify and maintain its constitutional social system."
the more I look at it the worse it gets
this image is an obscenity
McDonald's pulled out of Russia when the Ukraine conflict started, right? What are those restaurants doing now?
since mcdonalds mostly uses a franchise model (they dont own the restaurants they only own the trademark) most russian franchise owners either join together to make a new franchise or made their own independent ones
they should have went with the Uncle Vanya name, it would have being funnier, but they probably wanted to expand in the CIS countries in the future
The virgin Soviet perestroika McDonalds vs the chad Chinese reform and opening up Gucci.
:cat-confused: can't believe my own words
Oh yeah, it's Gorbin' time
Or possibly Yeltsin time, depending on if this was before or after the coup
Its was Gorbin' time, it was during the Perestroika before the coup
To be fair, there was actually a plan to transition the Russian language to use the Latin Alphabet. The main advocate of Romanization was People's Commissar for Public Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, who viewed the adoption of the script as a way to more effectively communicate with the global proletariat, and inspired by the similar Romanization of the Turkish language under Atatürk. Lenin was supportive of the plan, but believed in a more gradual approach. After the Civil War, the project began in earnest, although towards the various minority languages rather than Russian itself. The planned Romanization was cancelled by Stalin in 1930, with nearly all of Russia's minority languages having received Latin alphabets, even those that were previously entirely oral, but Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian were put off-limits. Later from 1936 to 1940, a similar policy was pursued, but towards Cyrillization of minority languages, except for languages that already had Latin alphabets such as Polish or Yiddish. The only non-Latin language that was not a target for Cyrillization was Georgian, as it already had its own alphabet. Lenin probably expected the Soviet Union to exclusively use the Latin alphabet by 1990.
What is with Europeans being so obsessed with American fast food chains? You always see pictures of them standing outside in huge lines whenever one opens up. That doesn't really happen here and is the reason Burger King never took off.
It's kinda strange, I'm from an ex-yugoslavian country and when McDonalds first came in the 90s it was almost like a prestige thing to go there since it wasn't really all that cheap and only more well off families could afford to go there regularly.
Also European McDonalds are way nicer than the US ones from what I hear, they keep them clean and freshly renovated all the time.
