[Spooky23]

Russia isn't the Soviet Union. And Moscow isn't the provinces.

I'm not dumping on Russia, but it's easy to look at the shiny place and forget about the other parts. If you were a time traveller from 1985, NYC looks like a magical fairy-land (at least on the surface). But Syracuse, NY or Utica, NY... not so much.

[nopriorarrests]

Well yes. USSR had plenty of different -stans included, they are independent countries now. They are getting back to middle ages since they got independance 30 years ago, thats true.

But you can take stats for russia proper from soviet times and compare it to 2019. Hell, you can take stats from 1993 when russia was not USSR already but was still collapsing.