Overview

The video examines modern-day Russia as a capitalist state in contrast to its Soviet past, highlighting the failures of post-Soviet reforms, economic collapse, social decline, and disillusionment among ordinary Russians. It frames the transition from socialism to capitalism as catastrophic, with little to show for three decades of reform compared to the achievements of the USSR.

Historical Context

• The USSR emerged from the October Revolution with major social, cultural, and economic gains: women’s rights, literacy, industrialization, superpower status.
• Despite invasions, embargoes, and sabotage, the USSR maintained global power until Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980s.
• Market reforms and the eventual dissolution of the USSR led to the “restoration of capitalism,” which the video calls the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the past century.

Economic Collapse

• Yeltsin’s “shock therapy” reforms (guided by Western neoliberals):
  • Removed price controls and subsidies.
  • Privatized state industries at absurdly low prices (e.g., oil and metals sold off for ~$600M).
  • Opened markets with no protections.
• Consequences:
  • GDP contracted by 40% between 1991–1998.
  • Mortality rate surged; 7M premature deaths in ex-USSR states (1990–1995).
  • Life expectancy fell to 64 years (lowest postwar level).
  • Prices skyrocketed (consumer goods x2000, rents x500).
  • Orphan crisis worse than WWII.
• Russia became the largest IMF borrower ($20B loans, largely unaccounted for).
• Subsequent crises: 1998 financial crash, 2008 crash, 2014 sanctions crisis, and 2022 downturn.
• By 2011, Russia’s GDP barely surpassed 1989 levels, but fell again soon after.

Inequality and Social Divide

• In the USSR, income gap: 1:5 (richest to poorest).
• In modern Russia: 1:20 to 1:300.
• The richest 10% own 87% of national wealth.
• 16–20M live below poverty line (~20% of the population).