>>1Not Nikita, list of things wrong with Russia.
1.Bureaucracy and tons of legal documents, laws that exist just to make existence pitiful with no net benefit to society.
Tons of documents required just to breathe legally.
2.Cultural/Urban decay, mass poverty and tolerance of low living conditions. I hate drama, but Russia is perfect inspiration for post-apocalyptic decay without any wars/crisis, just extreme neglect and low response to maintenance of just about everything.
3.The culture that encourages to half-ass everything and do the least work possible.
Potemkin village as concept was invented in Russia.
4.Social approval of violence and banditry if for a "good" cause. Law matters only for rich and powerful.
5.Export-driven Fossil fuel centered economy
that is very banana-republisque and unforgiving for price changes.
Attempts to encourage innovations are throwbacks to Soviet system of "science cities" with 'forced innovation' in huge bureaucratic institutions.
6.Climate of Canada with ten times the population and much less spending per capita.
Global warming might fix this in few decades.
7.Selfishness, greed and corruption masked by a heavy dose of forced patriotism: Russians are proud of living in shit, if it means Russia is "great" in some other aspect and their situation is just a tradeoff(similar to Indians being patriotic while living in literal shit). Common retort will be something like e.g. "but Russia is better in ballet, best on the planet".
8.Corruption:Wages in Russia are low and employers are greedy and corrupt, making employees more prone to corruption by proxy. The root cause of course is inadequate social safety nets(e.g. pensions) which make society dependent on wages and other irregular income: its a perfect counterexample to "America would be great without welfare".
9.Social systems/education/institutions: on paper they are great, but in reality they're soviet relics with fresh paint, ancient soviet shit re-purposed and repackaged as Russian.
Cost savings and neglect everywhere imaginable, systems depend on old idealists and soviet pensioners.