The Taste Of Pepsi-Cola Has Not Been A Symbol Of The Free World And Western Pop Culture For Me Since Childhood

MOSCOW. DECEMBER 22, 2021. PIR PRESS. “I have told my American partners many times that unlike many of my peers who tasted Pepsi-Cola for the first time probably during the Moscow Olympics in 1980, for me, a child brought abroad in 1967, the taste of this sweet brown liquid with bubbles was well known and by the time of the beginning of perestroika and the collapse of the USSR was not at all a symbol of the free world and Western pop culture. I had no particular illusions that the end of the Cold war and the market economy would bring us. Even though I was a child, I saw what it was and what it meant. It seems to me that 1991 I met with a sober mind and with a fairly calm understanding of what we should expect from life,” – Mikhail Margelov, Executive Vice President of Sistema JSFC.

EDITORIAL: Our guest of the project “Open Collar”, Executive Vice President of Sistema JSFC, a former Representative of the Pskov Region Administration to the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly, PIR Center Advisory Board member Mikhail Vitalievich Margelov celebrates his birthday today. He was the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation on the cooperation with African countries and the 4th Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs. Mikhail Vitalievich also was an observer at the presidential elections of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and served as Chairperson of the European Democratic Group (ED) in PACE. He told us about his childhood spent in Africa, the first espionage special operations, about how Russia managed to “subdue” the European conservative parties in PACE, the Russian fortress in California, and much more.

Read the interview (in Russian)