The Big Mac In Moscow Turns 30

Huge crowds line up outside Moscow's first McDonald's on Pushkin Square when it opened on January 31, 1990.

Muscovites were undeterred by the high prices at the new restaurant. Back in 1990, a Big Mac cost 3.50 rubles, more than a monthly bus pass. (The average monthly salary at the time was 150 rubles.)

It wasn't all plain sailing for McDonald's in its early days in Russia. Here, Russian animal rights activists protest outside an outlet in 1992. 

Quality-control inspectors at a McDonald’s food-processing plant located in the Moscow suburb of Solntsevo scan a conveyor belt for poorly formed hamburger patties in 1994. Machinery at the plant cranked out 10,000 hamburger patties hourly from beef provided by eight local slaughterhouses.