Honestly the USSR collapsing just shows how fragile that system was. And yeah the 90s were rough for basically everyone post-Soviet, but the Baltics clearly played it better long term. Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania have way higher QoL, better schools, actual functioning institutions, more opportunities, etc. Meanwhile Russia went the oligarch + authoritarian capitalism route and never really recovered socially. So ‘it got worse’ is true short term, but long term they absolutely upgraded.
Honestly the USSR collapsing just shows how fragile that system was. And yeah the 90s were rough for basically everyone post-Soviet, but the Baltics clearly played it better long term. Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania have way higher QoL, better schools, actual functioning institutions, more opportunities, etc. Meanwhile Russia went the oligarch + authoritarian capitalism route and never really recovered socially. So ‘it got worse’ is true short term, but long term they absolutely upgraded.
No, it showed how important fossil fuels, especially oil, were in the 20th century.
That’s gone now.
Oil revenues propped the system up, but when prices fell the underlying institutional failure showed.