Pushkinskaya Square

• 1. Introduction

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  In January 1990, a McDonald's opened in Pushkinskaya Square in central Moscow. It was the first in the Soviet Union, and at that time it was the largest in the world. The square is also called Pushkin Square, and it is a pedestrian open space in the Tverskoy District. Ordinary shoppers and passers-by shared this ground with the symbols of a changing country. Why did one crossing in Moscow draw so many people? What did the square carry on its map before it took the poet's name? And what else happened here that ranks among the most unusual gatherings in Soviet history?

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• 2. Crossroads Of Moscow

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  Two kilometres northwest of the Kremlin, Pushkinskaya Square sits where Tverskaya Street meets the Boulevard Ring. The ring is a curved band of boulevards around the centre. Tverskoy Boulevard runs off to the southwest, and Strastnoy Boulevard continues to the northeast. This junction makes the square one of the busiest city squares in Moscow. It is also counted among the busiest anywhere in the world. Its older name, Strastnaya, points to a building that no longer stands.

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• 3. The Passion Monastery

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  Before 1937, Muscovites knew this place as Strastnaya Square. The name came from the Passion Monastery, called Strastnoy Monastery in Russian. The Soviet regime demolished the monastery in the 1930s. In 1937 the authorities renamed the square after Alexander Pushkin. The poet already had a presence here, because a statue of him stood at the very centre.

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• 4. The Poet's Statue

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  In 1880, the writers Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky unveiled the Pushkin statue at the centre of the square. Public subscription paid for it, which means the money came from contributions by ordinary people. In 1950, Joseph Stalin had the statue moved to the other side of Tverskaya Street. Its new home was ground the monastery had once occupied. The square would later host a gathering with no postwar precedent in the country.

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• 5. The Glasnost Meeting

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  On the 5th of December 1965, people gathered in the square for what became known as the Glasnost Meeting. It was the first spontaneous public political demonstration in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Nobody had organised it in the way state events were organised. It happened in the same square where the monastery had been torn down and where the poet's statue had been carried across the street. Twenty-five years passed between that gathering and the arrival of the restaurant on the same ground.

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