Stalin collaborated with Hitler and provided NAZI Germany with the fuel and other materials it needed as Hitler waged war on Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, and France. Russia invaded peaceful Finland while Hitler fought the democracies of Europe. Stalin joined Hitler and invading Poland, too. Russia today threats all of Europe with idiotic statements about using nuclear weapons, air incursions, and the killing of Ukrainian citizens in an undeclared war. It support Iran with nuclear technology that the mad mullahs are using to build a nuclear weapon. It sell advanced weaponry to Iran and Syria assuring more war and more instability to the benefit of the Russian arms industry and no one else.
Briefly, Gorbachev and Yeltsin took Russia away from being a cruel and benighted communist nation and even worked to end its authoritarianism. But in their biggest mistake they failed to undo the elites of Russia who'd exploited the masses under communism. Russia remained controlled by the former communist elite who never gave up their ill gotten wealth. Essentially today it is this same crass but rich clique that rules Russia using phony nationalism as their ethos.
Putin returned the Russian people to their comfort zone with authoritarian rule; he reestablished their chauvinist nationalism, making the Russian people happy and proud again even as they were clearly once again a nation dedicated to poverty for the masses, philistinism, and corruption and lawlessness to the benefit of a small clique of thugs and cronies.
Putin's war on foreign food is just one example of how foolish he and his supporters are.
http://www.businessinsider.com/putins-war-on-european-food-is-facing-a-huge-backlash-in-st-petersburg-2015-8?IR=T
Putinism still seems to work ouy better for the Russians than Communism or Yeltsinism - maybe even better than Romanovism was for the Russians.
The U.S. ambassador to the USSR in 1987-1991 Jack F. Matlock, Jr. admitted in an interview that he had secret relationships with the former Moscow major Mr. Gavriil Popov as well as with Mr. Boris Yeltsyn (a former challenger for the Soviet presidency and the president of the RSFSR at the time) over a state coup conspiracy by some senior Soviet officials. The coup was tried in August, 1991 and failed.
The fact that Mr. Yeltsyn had secret relationships with a foreign power and the subsequent Yeltsyn’s policy as a Russian president proves that the RF was an U.S. puppet state. .
Your description of the USSR/Russia's history is one-sided but too long for me to bother arguing. Just take a note that all you have written are the things important to people outside Russia and almost none about its internal affairs. But the latter are way more important issues in choosing a country leaders, no matter where, whether in Russia, or in the U.S., or elsewhere. That’s because citizens vote, not foreigners.