USA, Middle East, and Canada didn't collapse after crude oil prices nosedived, so it wasn't just that. It actually collapsed when its military spending ended way higher than the badly planned economy could handle. At some point, USSR just couldn't afford to pay for itself any more (I believe the final straw was a new experimental football sized submarine they built and couldn't afford to pay for)
That's what I was arguing for as well, but got downvoted.
I would very much like people started to differentiate between Russia and Soviet Union.
Why? Are the people currently in power NOT the same exact people who used to work for the KGB and such? Who in russian government is not an old soviet government member or old soviet oligarch? (I suspect of those at the top, it's a very small list).
Not entirely. Those people that were in charge of the Soviet Union, are now in charge of Russia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithauen, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, well, you get the picture.
RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, for those who don't know), had least to say in its own governing, compared to the other republics in the Soviet Union. Even its name, Russia, was stripped and obscured into this abbreviation of RSFSR. Leaders of the USSR were in many cases not even Russian. I think Gorbachev was the first real leader of USSR who was Russian as well. Russia was for the most part the donor, while the other republics, the recipients (with the possible exception of the Baltic republics, which were always better off than the rest
*), and I am not just talking about money flow. Crimea is one of the more publicised donorships done by USSR without Russian consent (and against the Constitution of the Soviet Union).
So when talking of the period between 1917 and 1992, when you say "Soviets" or "USSR", you are covering the whole union, and by using "Russians" or "Russia" or "RSFSR", you are talking about a federation (which in turn consist of multiple coexisting nationalities), which almost ceased to exist during the USSR reign.
* A small digression: In USSR, travelling to the Baltic republics was like travelling to the West. I remember visiting some friends in Tallin, coming from Moscow myself and being amazed by high life standards and the general atmosphere of prosperity there. The Baltic countries now, under EU, are not even a shadow of their former self, and when I visited now "from the other side", I was again "amazed" in the sense of "appalled". If they were so opposed to the notion of unions, they should have taken the Norwegian route and said no to EU (Norway said no to EU twice, and is much happier for that).
If I was drinking a beer in public, even outside a restaurant, that's still legal. That's why that law was attacked.
We are entering the area of legal semantics. By the way, in Norway it's a criminal offence to partake beer in the street.
If a patron of a restaurant takes his glass of wine outside, that restaurant will have its license revoked by the police on the spot. And smoking in public undesignated areas will result in a hefty fine.
In Russia, no one would put you to jail for kissing, gay or heterosexual. However, organising a gay parade will not be tolerated as it is perceived as a forceful social propaganda.
If you really want to see a country where gay people are criminalised, travel to India, where you can be put in jail for it, or travel just 60 years back in time to Great Britain, where you could get "treated" (hint: Alan Turing a computer science genius, persecuted by the British authorities for being gay and coincidentally committed suicide the same year Crimea was separated from Russia. He was first pardoned by the Queen in 2013, a few months before Crimea reunited with Russia - coincidence again). The laws as they were formulated in Russia, then in Soviet Union and now in Russia again never went to these extremes. Russian Empire was actually one of the most liberal with this regard, and, guess what, was ridiculed by Europe for that.
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PS: Reminding all that it's the 1st of April. Any news in any outlet should be taken with extreme caution. Not that the whole Ukrainian farce hadn't been one huge April Fool's joke.
