The death rate in Russia went way up after the fall of the USSR.[1] Democracy and a free market did not deliver a better life for the average Russian. It's important to understand this, because it's part of why Russia ended up with an autocrat.

[1] https://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/life-expectan...

That death rate is IIRC mostly caused by increased alcoholism, so it may have more specific causes than just “democracy and the free market”.

Wouldn't despair about their predicament or future lead to alcoholism? Something that could be related to regime change.

Could you be more specific?

This article is a response to a critique, by the original authors. It should have cites to the debate: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2012.6...

Note that the Russian economy was still organised around a Sovjet planned economy. Just because you change the legal system doesn’t mean you have fixed the economy instantly. For example there were still monotowns, where the whole town was centred around a single factory. These towns are extremely fragile in a market economy.

> who saw their quality of life improve after it happened.

The end of the USSR is widely considered a humanitarian catastrophe because after the economy colapsed, people had no food, no medicines, no order, it was a wild west for several years (my wife was there, she tells me all about it)... where the hell did you "learn" that people's lives improved after the USSR fell??

It really depends where exactly you were. And quite a lot of people did in fact seen their lives being improved in the long term.