>(because, communism) You don't think Russia is still a communist country do you? It isn't, and hasn't been since the early 90s. The rest of the 90s were just a corrupt mess until Putin somehow got in power and appears to have genuinely cleaned it all up and is setting it up to a legit solid country again. That's why you love Russia. If you're going to take a post communist country and turn it into a decent place, all while the same forces that turned it into a communist shithole don't want you to succeed, it's going to take awhile, maybe 2 decades, before it becomes really noticeable.