[chriselles]

Pizza Hut opened in the Soviet Union in 1990 prior to collapse the following year.

Although many might contest Pizza Hut qualifying as real pizza. :)

It’s a shame authentic pizza didn’t grab hold earlier, especially with the origins of pizza being egalitarian peasant food.

Two early post-Soviet pizza events, both involving Pizza Hut, are somewhat relevant here.

Not so much about the introduction of Pizza, but the Pizza Hut proxy introduction of capitalism(western success) and dissolution of communism(Soviet failure).

Gorbachev Pizza Hut commercial(post Soviet collapse and during Russian Financial Crisis):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTIc-f1h3E

Pizza Hut also paid the Russian space program(in deep financial distress at the time) a considerable sum to have cosmonauts eat Pizza Hut in space, delivered on a Soviet-era Proton rocket carrying a 50ft Pizza Hut logo.

So pizza certainly existed in the waning days of the Soviet Union, but a deeper question might be what role did pizza(Pizza Hut specifically) play in influencing, exemplifying, or merely footnoting the troubled geopolitics between Russia and the pizza eating west?