Looking at what is happening, it seems that the entire success of the post-Soviet economy since the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR, was fully provided only by this:
The growth of oil prices and other hydrocarbons over the past 30 years has provided a calm, not bothered, not striving for something creative is life for ordinary citizens and the local oligarchy.
In addition, the economic potential of the domestic economy was provided only by the West through the use of post-Soviet areas as a kind of springboard with inexpensive factors of production, where cheap energy resources derived from them and low wages ensured production of a low-cost product, which was ultimately implemented first. That is, the West provided its own technologies, our processing (inexpensive processing), and then all this in the form of a finished product was exported back to the homeland of importers of the original technologies.
Thus, a comfortable price cushion due to hydrocarbons and attractive trade turnover for the West provided us with foreign exchange earnings and reserves, which, in fact, formed the whole comfortable life. Gold reserves have been successfully replenished due to foreign exchange surpluses, one part of which has already been frozen, and the other is being used to smooth out current budget problems. The rest is all gone, while there was a great opportunity with such a resource base to reinvest all this in their technologies. Even the brains that could provide all this could be bought on the side and mastered at home if there were not enough of their own.
The scheme is breaking down before our eyes, and what will happen next, taking into account the innate human mentality, it is difficult to even imagine living under such a scenario.
