Russia Enters an Information Black Hole. What Will Come Out the Other Side?
International sanctions are crushing Russia’s economy, but Russians may not fully know why
At Yale’s school of management, you’ll find a list of — at writing — over 300 companies that have either suspended their operations in Russia, otherwise limited their engagement in the country, or actively made it difficult for Russia/Russians to be part of the global market. The most recent major pull-out was McDonald’s, which suspended its operations on Tuesday.
Of all the western corporations to leave Russia, it’s one of the most symbolic. When the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow in February 1990 (at that time the world’s largest, with seating for 700), it was hailed as emblematic of the west’s superiority. The New York Times even quoted Stanislav Kondrashev, a business analyst for Izvestia, the official news horn of the Communist Party, as opining that the McDonald’s was “the expression of America’s rationalism and pragmatism toward food.”
From the Times:
“The contrast with our own unrealized pretensions is both sad and challenging,’’ [Kondrashev] wrote on the front page, recalling old Kremlin vows to commercially bury the West’s cola industry with Russian kvass and its pasta craze with…
