[woooooo]

It's deeply American to call Russia "collectivist". It's more similar to 1800s America, economically, than it is to the USSR. Oligarchs owning resource extraction for sale into capital markets.

Generally when people say "collectivist", they mean "bad guys in black hats and also I liked Ayn Rand"

[hackerlight]

Russia is collectivist not because of their economic system but because of their nationalism. National rejuvenation is prioritized above the prosperity and freedom of the individual.

[badpun]

That's just a narrative the ruling thugs use to explain to people while their lives continue to be shitty while the rest of the world keeps improving. Most people in Russia are brainwashed into believing that, even though they're not well off by any means on a personal level, Russia is a global superpower that can rival the US. BTW I wonder if the current absolute embarrasment of Russian Army in Ukraine will be able to speak some sense into Russian people - but, judging by what I see in the Internet, the official propaganda has already convinced Russians that their army is fighting against entire NATO forces and not just Ukrainian army (because obviously, just the Ukrainian army would be defeated in under a month).

[izacus]

Yeah, if anything, Russia is a hyper-individualist ultra-capitalist endstate of society - every man for himself, taking care only for himself and everything you need has to be paid for. Even soldiers have to buy their own equipment with predatory loans from people that stole it from the army.

Calling Russia (heck or even China) "collectivist" is just repeating propaganda from expired times and show a horrifyingly poor education.