Facepalm

I doubt Russia is much better but it’s probably at least slightly better.

Regardless of what one thinks of the USSR (and there's plenty to be critical of), its fall was disastrous and is the reason why it's now filled with billionaires doing just billionaire things and at prolonged war with Ukraine. I can't think of any way it is now better. The place was pillaged and the people screwed over even worse than they had before. "Shock therapy" is what they call the liberalization process.

With the exception of Belarus, the Eastern European states adopted shock therapy. Nearly all of these post-Soviet states suffered deep and prolonged recessions after shock therapy,  with poverty increasing more than tenfold. The resulting crisis of the 1990s was twice as intense as the Great Depression in the countries of Western Europe and the United States in the 1930s.

The cost to human life was profound, as Russia suffered the worst peace time increase in mortality experienced by any industrialized country.  For the years 1987 and 1988, roughly 2% of Russia population lived in poverty (surviving on less than $4 a day), by 1993-1995, it was 50%