Comment The commercial opens with a snowy view of Moscow’s Red Square, where a man and his granddaughter are on their way to Pizza Hut. Once inside, other diners look on as Mikhail Gorbachev — the last leader of the Soviet Union, who helped end the Cold War — sits down for a slice. Arguments follow. In Pizza Hut’s 25-year-old, minute-long ad — which resurfaced Tuesday after Russian news agencies announced Gorbachev had died at 91 — his colleagues are divided over his legacy. “Because of this, we have financial confusion!” says an older man. “Because of him, we have opportunities!” replies a younger man. The 1997 ad was meant to be funny, Tom Darbyshire, who wrote the ad for advertising agency BBDO, told the Washington Post. Drawing on the debate over the legacy of Gorbachev – a man seen as a hero abroad and a villain in Russia – the ad sought to show that “pizza is one of those foods that brings people together and bridges their differences,” said Darbyshire. But the commercial that made Pizza Hut trend on Twitter on Tuesday almost didn’t happen — and it didn’t even air in Russia. It took a year of negotiations for Gorbachev to agree. He refused to eat pizza on camera – enlisting his granddaughter to do it. That bitter-cold morning they were to shoot arrived late, Darbyshire recalls. “We weren’t sure he was going to show up,” she said. “It took about an hour, the negotiations were a bit tense and I think he only did it because he needed the money.” The value of Gorbachev’s pension plummeted after the fall of the Soviet Union, Foreign Policy reported. Eliot Borenstein, a professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University, said it was “sad and ironic” that the former leader was so strapped for cash that he had to do the ad — and that the only way Gorbachev got the praise from the Russians was through paid actors. Despite the initial challenges, Darbyshire said the day of filming was filled with emotional moments. They shot on Thanksgiving, and as the crew ate pizza instead of turkey, Gorbachev stood up and insisted on serving the slices, she recalled. “A day to give thanks for all that we have in America, our freedoms and our abundance, to make this symbolic gesture realizing that it was keeping us away from our families … it was something I will never forget.” he said. The final product reflects Gorbachev’s complex legacy, said Jenny Kaminer, a professor of Russian at the University of California, Davis. The ad “aligns with how different generations experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he told The Post in an email. For some, Gorbachev’s dual policy of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) held the promise of economic freedom. For others “Anyone who could not adapt to the rapid transition to a market economy meant abject poverty, insecurity and a humiliating loss of dignity,” Kaminer said. This divide is similar to how Westerners see Gorbachev versus the Russians’ view of him, he added. “Most Russians, I would say, agree with the older man’s verdict [in the ad] who blames Gorbachev for creating chaos and instability while Westerners cheer him for upholding our supposedly sacred liberal values of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’” Kaminer said. Biden, Putin and other leaders react to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev University of Arizona professor Pat Willerton agrees. “The Russians saw someone whose efforts led to the collapse of the country,” Willerton, a scholar of Russian politics, told The Post. “They saw someone whose efforts were accelerating an already deteriorating domestic, political and socio-economic situation. They saw a leader who was naive in the way he engaged in the West. They feel that the West has taken full advantage of their efforts and that they have reached an inferior position of power.” The patrons in the Pizza Hut ad finally rally when an old woman interrupts the fight to chime in: “We have a lot of things like Pizza Hut because of him!” Soon everyone will be raising a piece in chants of “Hail to Gorbachev!” In reality, however, not everyone finds this common ground. As The Post’s David E. Hoffman wrote, “Soviet collapse was not Mr. Gorbachev’s goal, but it may be his greatest legacy. It ended a seven-decade experiment born of utopian idealism that led to some of the bloodiest human suffering of the century.” However, Gorbachev’s bold moves proved a double-edged sword in a country that historically valued strong men. Abroad, he caused “Gorbymania” – drawing large crowds who showered him with praise for easing nuclear tensions that had caused nerves. But at home, he became persona non grata, consistently ranking among Russia’s most disliked leaders – even below Joseph Stalin, who ordered executions and forced people into labor camps. “The diametrically opposed views reflect the world we live in,” Willerton said. “We are in a completely divided world.” A 2017 Pew Research Center poll found that more than two-thirds of Russians surveyed said the collapse of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. That number rose among older Russians, the poll found. In the same survey, 58% of Russians polled rated Stalin favorably, while 22% rated Gorbachev. How popular is Putin, really? “In Russia, greatness is not about being good. it’s about being strong,” Willerton said. “That’s why a modern Russian watching the ad would probably think ‘Thank God we have [President Vladimir] Putin now after the mess that Gorbachev left.’ “ Gorbachev was aware of the negative views of the Russians. Initially, concerns about his legacy led him to decline to star in the ad, wrote Madison Darbyshire of the Financial Times in 2019. He finally agreed when “after a row with his successor, Boris Yeltsin, he suddenly needed new office property for the his institution. ” according to Darbyshire, whose father is Tom Darbyshire. This need for capital also led Gorbachev to agree to another now-viral moment: a 2007 Louis Vuitton campaign shot by Annie Leibovitz. In it, the former politician appears in the back seat of a car with the remains of the Berlin Wall in the background. Gorbachev’s boldest political move in the Putin era? This Louis Vuitton ad from 2007, with a (Russian-language) reference to the assassination of Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko prominently displayed outside the top of the designer’s expensive bag. pic.twitter.com/U2IbI3UVUe — John Slocum (@JohnSlocum2) August 30, 2022 Tuesday wasn’t the first time Gorbachev’s Pizza Hut ad had made the rounds. The commercial has periodically found new audiences online, even though it aired before the age of social media. It was widely shared earlier this year amid talk of Pizza Hut pulling out of Russia due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Seeing the ad resurface this week unlocked another memory for Darbyshire: the process of translating the script from English to Russian. After reading it, a Russian speaker told him, “We don’t have a word for freedom in the way you think of freedom in America,” Darbyshire said. “That was an interesting idea, that freedom, as we imagine it, is not even a word that they had a term for, because this is a country that maybe rushed to try democracy without putting all the institutions in place,” he said. Gorbachev would later see some of the freedoms celebrated in this commercial reversed under Putin. The pizza memes continue, however.
