Do you unironically believe that one gag from the Simpsons that the Russian Federation was just faking it when the USSR dissolved? This is maybe the most retarded Cold Warrior take I've ever seen.
Unless you've been in a coma since 1989: the Russians privatized and sold off all of their state-run industry after the fall of the USSR, mostly for pennies on the dollar, leaving most people completely broke at under the boot of domestic oligarchs, but more predominantly western venture capitalists; until Putin was able to wrangle in a lot of that corruption and graft (and not by secretly reconstituting communism). I'm simplifying but these are the broad strokes. This is where the average Russian boomer/GenXers Soviet Nostalgia and resentment of America comes from; not because they're working in the shadows to reinstitute Bolshevism you fucking mongoloid.
They HAD to sell off everything for pennies on the dollar because communism no longer worked. It works for a while, but eventually it just runs out of steam. They fucked up. If it was all working, the USSR wouldn't have collapsed in the first place.
Retards defending Russia always talk about what happened
after the fall of the USSR, not what happened before. If this system was so fucking amazing, then why did it fall? Why do most of their neighbors in the Eastern bloc low key, or even up key, hate them?
Because corruption is normalized in communism, that carried over. That's why corruption was so rampant- because it already was. The problem is just being Russian. Being honest and respectful of neighbors is damn near impossible for them. That's because they grew up always having to lie to avoid getting in trouble for wrongthink. (No Russian or Chinese whatsoever should fap about American cancel culture, holy fuck). They also were raised in a snitching culture, which is why they are so shitty to each other.
Putin may have wrangled in some corruption, but not a whole lot. It's still default mafia.
Even if he
did wrangle in some of the corruption, he'd do better to admit that corruption is a Russian character trait and he has no one to blame but Russians. If he wants to be a dictator, he should work at rehabbing them. Instead, he's enforcing their victim complex that it's all the West's fault like some Slavic Ibram X. Kendi.
Maybe the West was naive and wrong to think it possible for Russians to be normal. Perhaps you're right and these are a people that can only borderline function under something like communism. That's not saying much for them as a people, though.