Trash Can

Here, the fact that there's no real choice is a bad thing. Yes, we don't have totalitarianism, but rather some kind of monarchy, in my opinion. And regarding "Medvedev seems like a decent guy," he's not decent at all; he's not perceived by most people as the president; the country is currently being run more by two prime ministers – the former and the current one. As for criticizing the USSR, I wouldn't do that yet, nor would I praise it. Too little time has passed to objectively assess all its pros and cons. If we were to evaluate it, people generally lived better under the USSR than under the monarchy, no matter how you look at it, and the country's level was lower than that of Third World countries, but that very totalitarianism raised it significantly. The price for this was simply huge, but whether it was worth it is still too early to judge.