the fall of the soviet union was objectively bad both for the mass of the people living inside it and for the world. what came after was disaster capitalism killing millions and dictatorship in all but name under putin, plus it enabled US imperialism as sole remaining superpower

look at the steep drop in all social indicators for various groups (women, minorities, the elderly), and the more vulnerable the more dramatic the drop: it's like they were in a war-zone. but the devastation was caused by capitalism so it's considered natural, as chomsky notes

if the outcome had been some social democratic scandinavian type of society, it would be hard to argue on purely utilitarian grounds that its fall was objectively bad. but again, what do you have now? an authoritarian capitalist plutocracy with sort of kind of free speech rights

nazis roaming the streets attacking immigrants, rabid homophobia encouraged by the state, gutting of social welfare, out of control alcoholism, drug addiction and other social ills caused by a neoliberal hellscape where no one has any viable prospects for the future

but this is hidden from view. sure, there are no more lines in front of shops, instead those who would've been standing in line die lone deaths. western media has a deranged mccarthyite pathology about russia still, but it takes aim at its foreign policy. they love the capitalism

btw to add some data to this, see this piece: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC259165/. up to 3 million additional deaths in the decade after the fall of the soviet union. that's staggering

and here is chomsky on the facile comparisons between the soviet bloc and the west, from his great piece "the victors" ( https://chomsky.info/199011__/ ), where he sums up the horrific record of a triumphant capitalist west

not surprising that in the 1996 presidential election, amid all the devastation, communists were leading in the polls. what happened? a major propaganda campaign, aided by US capital, and voila, yeltsin won another term. again, chomsky on this phenomenon

yeltsin's victory meant the devastation would continue, and the excess death count would reach the aforementioned 3 million. the response in the US was exuberant. they celebrated the success of their propaganda campaign publicly, gleeful about all the people they helped murder

it was clinton's administration that did this by the way. and of course this blocking of the left's rise to power through bourgeois democratic means ensured the rise of putin shortly thereafter, a right-wing authoritarian. yet again proof that fishhook theory is Science