Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I agree with @DradisPing that the Communists were terrible (although this didn't necessarily have anything to do with their talent pool; Soviet engineers were very innovative). I have an earlier comment where I compare Russia to other countries, and it seems fairly clear to me that despite being dealt a bad hand (despairing population, low TFR) Russia has a low debt-to-GDP ratio, fairly high GDP PPP per capita, and fewer drug deaths (per capita) than the US - all the sorts of managerial items that suggest, to me, fairly good governance.
Another way of looking at it is that Russia's GDP PPP is above (or roughly on par with) Estonia and Latvia (but behind Poland and Lithuania) even though it has less debt than those countries! And the Baltics and Poland have been in the EU for twenty years!
I think this framing is overly reductive and simplistic, but to me it strikes me the same way it would if you had two siblings, one of whom moved into the city, got their bachelor's, and enjoyed all that market access had to offer, and the other stayed in their small hometown. If you checked back in in 20 years and you found that one of them hadn't paid off their (substantial) student loans despite working a well-paying job in the big city while the other's only substantial debt was a mortgage, and they both had a house and a car and a TV, you'd have to conclude the second brother was better at managing his money. If the second brother had managed to accomplish that despite crippling depression and a year in jail for a DUI you'd be more impressed by his self-management, not less.
Caveat that the war may change all of this in the long term.
Getting into devastating wars is part of Russia's time-honored history, they do get a bit wrecked but always end up surviving, though the elites may get shuffled up. The wars may even be a source of eugenic pressure keeping the IQ high, as the generally low IQ front line chaff is killed off.
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