They just kick the socialist welfare teet...it's like a crack pipe..
I think it's the loss of super-power status and it's a particularly Russian thing. What's the saying about them either being on their knees or at your throat? If Stalin rose from the dead and ran today he'd be overwhelmingly elected.
I think the issue isn't that they didn't want reform, everyone wanted reform. It was the type of reform: the socialist, pie in the sky reform that destroyed the nation.