It’s easy for the West to say that Russia had a “complicated” relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev in that it doesn’t want to flatly admit that large swathes of the former Soviet Union never forgave their only president for bending over to the American capitalist dream. Shaking hands with Reagan and Thatcher being tantamount to treason for some Russians (like the ones who engaged in the August Coup) whose ideology could never possibly “adhere” to Western “ideals.” Those ideals being manifest in the advertising catchphrase, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” Ironically enough, that’s actually a decidedly socialist statement. And maybe that’s what Gorbachev dreamed of: a world where capitalist and communists could coexist in peace. But if that were the case, he certainly leaned more toward the favor of the former category as he helped facilitate the breakdown of the Soviet bloc.
More than likely, the psychology behind Gorbachev’s methods stemmed from wanting to run in the opposite direction of Stalinism, which he lived under as a poverty-stricken youth in an agricultural environment. By the same token, communism was something he wanted to believe could work, just like so many Russians fed the propaganda. Part of making it “work” (inevitably resulting in its bastardization) was ceasing to rule with an iron fist and allowing the concepts of “perestroika” and “glasnost” to flourish. Having lived through some of the Soviet Union’s most brutal and horrific periods under Stalin, Gorbachev undeniably did not want others to grow up in such an oppressive milieu. And yet, though everyone talks about how the Berlin Wall was a momentous occasion for human rights, rarely does anyone address how it was the beginning of the end for global diversity. Making way instead for globalization, the phenomenon that has prompted many travelers to wonder if they even left their own country, because everything everywhere looks the fucking same now, i.e. like the United States.
The fall of the wall was the last piece in the American puzzle of How to Conquer the World. Unlike the Romans, the CEOs of U.S. corporations didn’t even have to leave the comfort of their corner office to overtake whatever territory they wanted, planting a McDonald’s flag here, a Pizza Hut flag there—all in the name of spreading the American gospel: Capitalism. Nonetheless, Gorbachev insisted he was a social democrat after veering away from Marxism-Leninism. But it seems even Bernie Sanders is more of a social democrat than franchise-happy Gorbachev was—the presence of American businesses being the mark of “progress” and “modernization.” And, to those who saw him shilling for, what else, Pizza Hut in 1998, it was clear that the Soviet Union dissolved for, well, the price of an American song (this being reportedly one million dollars for Gorbachev’s appearance).
In said commercial, Gorbachev walks into a Pizza Hut where two patrons at another table argue. The rotund, old man (presumably the patriarch) in the permutation insists, “Because of him, we have economic confusion!” The son/younger man—obviously meant to represent “the future” of Russia—counters, “Because of him, we have opportunity!” The older man claps back, “Because of him, we have political instability!” The youth reasserts, “Because of him we have freedom.” The old man sees that as, “Complete chaos!” The young man declares it as, “Hope!” The old man comes back again with, “Political instability!” A grandmotherly lady at the table then shuts it all down with, “Because of him we have many things. Like Pizza Hut.” With that, the two arguing men can come to an agreement as the older one stands up first to lead everyone in the restaurant in saying, eerily enough, “Hail Gorbachev.”
A voiceover then chimes in, “Sometimes nothing brings people together like a nice hot pizza from Pizza Hut.” In other words, sometimes those who can black out on the occasional “perks” of capitalism are able to forget about their erstwhile commitment to something like “principles.” But Gorbachev still tried his best to “play both sides,” as it were. Wanting, on the one hand, the utopian version of socialism that was “supposed to happen,” but also inviting the Yankee in to decimate all possibility of such a thing. Incidentally, the Pizza Hut commercial didn’t air in Russia.
To add to the absurdity of it all, Pizza Hut ended up leaving the country in October of that same year due to the Russian Financial Crisis. And it would leave again in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What some might call Putin’s response to “repairing” “the damage” Gorbachev did by catalyzing the demise of the Soviet Union. Because, with the bloc broken, the USSR as plain Russia felt “weak” without the republics of Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Not to mention the satellite states of Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany… now, ultimately, just West Germany as far as the die-hard Soviets are concerned.
And yes, Putin remains a die-hard Soviet. One that Gorbachev was open about criticizing when he “took the reins” (re: became a dictator) after Boris Yelstin. Indeed, yet another ad Gorbachev would participate in, for Louis Vuitton, bien sûr (showing that his taste for the finer things had evolved in the decade since the Pizza Hut commercial), seemed to be filled with shade directed at Putin. For a magazine placed at the top of the bag features a headline that reads, “Litvinenko’s murder: They wanted to give up the suspect for $7,000.” Litvinenko being the former KGB spy-turned-MI6 “stooge” who accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning while on his deathbed in 2006. The year before the indelible image of Gorbachev endorsing LV was released in ’07.
All involved in the photo shoot (helmed by Annie Leibovitz) claimed no one had any “political intent,” and that the magazine placed at the top of the bag was “sheer coincidence.” But what can’t be argued as coincidence is Gorbachev’s grotesque placement in front of the ruins of the Berlin Wall in his limo with a Louis bag next to him. It’s almost screaming, “This is what the Wall came down for! So we could all buy a bunch of shit and contribute more rapidly to societal decay!”
And it’s true, because no sooner had the Berlin Wall fallen than both McDonald’s and Pizza Hut set up shop in Moscow. For America, it was never about “freedom,” it was about the expansion of the free market. A bottom line that Gorbachev happened to play conveniently into as just another pawn in the capitalist agenda, himself becoming, for all intents and purposes, one of its biggest proponents. Even if he didn’t want to be, he became repackaged by the West as an emblem of all the “progress” that can come to your country if you just let Nike into your heart.
