“We believed that tomorrow, the very next day, would usher in freedom. “What an incredibly happy time!” writes Svetlana Alexievich in Secondhand Time, her account of the Soviet Union’s dissolution and its tragic aftermath. As sweet as that dvoini gamburger (double hamburger) may have tasted, the promise of western-style capitalism proved hollow. We all know what happened in the decade that followed: the disaster of “shock therapy” economics, the plundering of Russian industry by a cabal of oligarchs, the rise of Putin. The response from the crowd in Moscow is joyous havoc, a catharsis years in the making. If you’re of a certain age and musical persuasion, it’s oddly touching to see Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell (RIP), replete with a razor-blade necklace, do a stink-face shredding thing on his guitar while lead singer Phil Anselmo screams, “We’re taking over the entire country!” (A riff on the line “We’re taking over this town” from the song “Cowboys From Hell.”) But nothing compares to Metallica galloping on stage, lithe and frizzy-haired, to open their set with “Enter Sandman,” a once ubiquitously annoying song that, in hindsight, was one of America’s most influential cultural exports of the time, inspiring a distinct look that inundated both Eastern Europe and high schools around the world: tattered jeans, greasy locks, black Metallica T-shirt. The bands that played that day included AC/DC, the Black Crowes, and Pantera. “Remember why we are here,” they say, “to celebrate our victory.” Yet there are also people in army uniforms enjoying the music along with everyone else, flashing devil horns and lolling their tongues as if they’re in need of an exorcism. The show’s organizers repeatedly come on stage to plead with the crowd to refrain from violence, lest the authorities shut it down. Red Army soldiers have been called in to do crowd control, clashing against a seething sea of concertgoers. The video, part of a concert documentary called For Those About to Rock: Monsters in Moscow, captures a nation in the flux of late perestroika. Perhaps none are as arresting as an absolutely massive concert that Metallica headlined in Moscow in 1991, mere months before the official collapse of the Soviet Union. A contemporaneous account in the Washington Post described the inaugural franchise in Pushkin Square as a “splash of brilliant color in the middle of a gray city” and a “gastronomic-cum-cultural revolution in the homeland of scientific communism.”Īs the post-Soviet era seems to come to a close - with Starbucks and Coca-Cola joining McDonald’s in shutting down their businesses in Russia, the regime cracking down on the remnants of the country’s free press, and sanctions cinching around the economy like a noose - other artifacts of that false dawn are circulating on social media. “I remember when this McDonald’s opened and driving by, nose pressed against the glass, looking at the long, long lines, wrapping around the block,” wrote Puck’s Julia Ioffe. The news was met with dismay by those who recalled when the Golden Arches first arrived in Moscow in 1990, a gleaming harbinger of a new and more hopeful era. McDonald’s announced this week that it would cease operations in Russia as part of a global push to isolate Vladimir Putin’s government.
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