That is simply not true. Tsarist Russia had individual freedom and rule of law on par with the rest of the civilized world after the serfdom was abolished in 1861. In more recent period, under Yeltsin, there was considerable level of civic freedom: press, for example, was free from censorship and privately owned and there was no political prisioners. Putin ended the mafia wars; that was his single accomplishment. However what he replaced the gangsters with is not rule of law but centralized around his person cleptocracy.
Were you living there under Yeltsin or it was Clinton who said you how nice and democratic his drunken calamite was?
I’m yet to see Putin ordering an artillery strike on Parliament impeachment him as Yeltsin did in 1993. What about a Yeltsin ‘Banditism act’ of that same year allowing any LEO down to a traffic inspector to imprison every person unilaterally for up to 30 days without trial ‘to check for being involved in an organised crime’? They weren’t obliged to provide a lawyer and your written ‘confession’ taken who knows how during these 30 days could put you on a death row. What about a 1996 presidential elections won by Yeltsin despite a rating of about 2% just a month ago? What about a 120% taxation on small businesses above a 50% protection fees from Mafia? A crime was rampant. You could have been robbed twice a day and a small city could have up to ten fatal shootings daily.
Yeltsinist regime was a step backward comparing to every Soviet regime after Stalin in terms of freedom.
A single freedom one could practice freely comparing to the Soviet regime is a freedom of travel. On the over hand a ticket to New York was way other an average annual income in that economy.