Odd how many Frenchmen yearned for the return of Bonaparte, or Scots for the Stuart monarchy. For that matter, I met Italians in the 1950s who yearned for the good old days of Mussolini when the government finally brought running water to their villages, and Peronism still has a grip on large sections of the Argentine working class. Also note the Teamsters who plan to vote for Junior Hoffa because the union was strong back when his father was the Duce.
The politics of nostalgia are an interesting subject for another discussion, but I suggest that rather than look at how many Russians would like the old regime back (not that huge a number, judging by both size of demonstrations and votes in the elections), he should look at how many wanted to get rid of it while it was there.
The fact is, when the one and only Gallup poll among Russians and Ukrainians was done in the Gorbachev years, it came up with only 10% supporting "socialism as we have known it", 17% for Reagan-Thatcher style capitalism, and the rest fairly evenly divided between "democratic socialism" and a capitalist welfare state like Sweden. Since there wasn't any real democracy in the old SU (and isn't in the Russian Federation today either), the "real" debate devolved into a quarrel among the apparatchiki as to whether they could best loot the country under the old bureaucratic system or the new capitalism, with no democratic alternatives allowed.
The only way to get mass participation in real planning for intelligent use (and preservation) of natural resources is to have a system under which (a) people can put forward and argue for solutions to problems without the prior permission of any self-appointed philosoher kings and (b) those responsible for carrying out decision can be tossed out from below, not merely judged by their peers like a gang of feudal barons.
As the Internationale so well puts it:
"We want no condescending saviours To rule us from a judgment hall; We workers ask not for their favors, Let each consult for all."
Tom C.