When the history of the end of the Cold War gets told, the Golden Arches often get overlooked…but maybe they shouldn’t. It was 25 years ago today that perhaps the most notorious symbol of Western capitalism invaded Moscow, with the Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s opening at Pushkin Square on January 31, 1990. It took 14 years for McDonald’s to work out the deal that would allow the landmark opening. Two years later, the Soviet Union was gone, along with the geopolitical conflict that had defined everything for nearly half a century.

The pent-up demand was clearly there from the beginning. Even though Big Macs were rather pricey by Russian standards, it’s still estimated that around 30,000 people lined up on the first day to try the burgers and fries that had been forbidden fruit for so long. The food was expensive compared to state-subsidized eateries, but the Russians were impressed by the friendliness of the employees and the cleanliness of the restaurant ...the world’s largest McDonalds, with 28 cash registers and seating for 700. (It closed last year.)

By August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and by that December, the USSR had simply dissolved. Did McDonald’s bring down one of the world’s two great geopolitical superpowers? Of course not. But Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms opened up the Soviet Union in previously unheard of ways. The invasion of the Happy Meal was just one sign things were changing. But a quarter-century later, it’s easy to look at those crowds outside a Moscow McDonald’s and assume that the end was near.

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