Yes, the climate and the conditions were caused by the Soviets. I am not disputing that. I watched the presentation. Thanks for the link. I am disputing the underlying value judgement that somehow life there is inferior to the west. It may be so materially, but in other, more important ways, is superior.
I fail to see where that “underlying value” is expressed. Under the Soviets it was a sh!t show. A major lake was destroyed. Land and people were contaminated with nuclear fall-out. Once Russia stopped sticking its hand in, the country slowly but surely righted itself, and the Russians are still there, but not quite gone yet. Medvedev openly threatened to re-take Kazakhstan as Russia already did to Crimea. Then he claimed that somebody hacked his twitter account and put that post in there. Whatever. Western values are nowhere mentioned that I could see.
Parenthetically, there is a video from 2019 of Russian witches publicly casting a spell to make Putin successful in all his endeavors. Great traditional values, that.