Russia suffered less than others from the collapse of the USSR - political scientist
Russia managed to maintain its status as a great power despite the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, stated this in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“I think it would be correct to say that Russia suffered less than others from the collapse of the Union. If only because it has retained its status as a great power. And this is not a value judgment - no one took away our place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It has retained its nuclear potential, which in the current turbulent world cannot be called superfluous,” said the political scientist.
“We should not forget that Russia literally fed the other union republics. This was a conscious policy of the USSR leadership to equalize the standard of living. By the way, similar mechanisms operate in the European Union. According to basic indicators, people in Russia live better than in other republics of the former USSR. Well, maybe, except for the Baltic states, which went under the wing of the European Union,” Zharikhin noted.
According to him, in terms of salaries, the Baltic states may seem even more successful than Russia, but minus the cost of living, this is no longer the case.
Russia suffered the least from the collapse of the USSR, says political scientist