Jeff Sommers:
As someone who currently lives in the former USSR, I agree with much of what Chris Doss says.
--- Good to have somebody else in the Rodina on this list so people don't think I'm ceazy. :)
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Yet, I would balance his remarks by suggesting the Soviet Union depoliticized its people, leaving them without confidence to more actively protest as say the Argentineans did when their economy collapsed. Surely, though, the Soviets are not entirely to blame. A passivity bread by centuries of feudalism pervades Russian society. ---
I would agree with this, except that I would put the emphasis on the last sentence rather than the first. Both the USSR and modern Russia are the products of a largely peasant body politic that, frankly, didn't/doesn't care very much about democracy in the liberal sense of the term. Russian "democracy" is much more about egalitarianism that personal liberty and many people will tell you that Brezhnev was more of a democrat than Yeltsin could ever dream of being, precisely for this reason.
I would say that "democracy" enjoyed a brief period of fashionability from 1986-1993, that is, from the beginning of Glastnost' to Yeltsin's shelling of the White House. Even then, though, I think it was more like children playing with a shiny new toy that anything deep-seated. In any case, today it is virtually impossible for a politician to get elected as a democrat. It is like running as a goatfucker. Actually whenever Putin does something that is ritually denounced in the editorial pages of Western newspapers as an attack on democracy (e.g. attacking oligarch-owned media outlets), his approval ratings at home see a spike, because he is perceived as sticking it to another asshole democrat. ---
That said, many, especially in cities, enjoy new consumer goods, such as cars. Moscow has observed something like a 5 fold increase in their numbers since the Soviet collapse.
--- Yes. The traffic jams are amazing. It once took my 3 hours to go the 15 km from Moscow to Lubertsy. ---
West Europe dumps its old vehicles, many having been in accidents and unsaleable in the West for safety reasons, into Russia.
--- There was some effort made a while ago on the part of the domestic auto industry (in the person mainly of Oleg Deripaska) to increase tariffs on imports of used cars -- I don't remember to what extent it succeeded. ---
There is also an regional core-periphery dimension of this issue. Moscow parasitically draws off Russia's wealth, where it is concentrated.
--- Yes. Muscovites never really suffered even during the darkest days of Yeltsin. I would go so far as to say that, if you are not a victim of the generational poverty that afflicts Russia (that is, you are not a pensioner), the living standards of most Muscovites are probably higher than they were in the Soviet era. God knows the amount of money in the city is un-be-liev-able.
Muscovites sit around on their fat pampered asses all day doing nothing but complaining about the non-Muscovites and immigrants who come to the city and are the only ones who actually do work.