I wasn't saying that Russia in the 90s was an happy place like the cocaine driven USA of the 90s.

Russia in the 90s was dealing with the ruins left by the regime.

I know of people that died because they poisoned themselves with home made vodka.

In Italy people were going crazy from all the novelties too, like any novelty people are attracted to them, you could see kids walking down the streets all dressed like Andre Agassi, all with the same haircut, even those that had no money to afford them, a friend of mine was caught many times stealing from the new mall that had recently opened in Rome.

It might surprise you, but the first mall in Rome was opened in 1989. Not so long ago.

It was fun at first, it soon became the most boring thing to do.

The first Mc Donald's in Italy was opened in Piazza di Spagna (Spanish steps) in 1987, 40 years after their first opening in the US.

The first Mc Donald's in Russia opened in 1990, not a lot of difference there.

Ironically, probably thanks to the strong US military presence, Germany had its first Mc Donald's in 1971.

There were people that saw one in Germany (probably agents from East Germany as well) 16 years before us.

Of course the difference is we could travel to US, there was no restriction for us to go there.

But on average people didn't know much about US culture up until the middle 80s.

We actually knew USSR a lot better than the US of A, just as an example see the story of Togliattigrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolyatti

They mainly knew stories about their grandfathers who went to America between the two wars.

Most of them never came back, the only read about it from letters.

But what brought USSR down wasn't the discovery of the supermarkets, it was the war in Afghanistan that left the once powerful Eastern Block with no money and forced them to declare bankruptcy.