Genuinely asking, did you live East of the Wall back then?
Because I did live East of the Wall (not in the former USSR, though), and I can assure you that we were most certainly not living in "destitute poverty" (my dad was a civil engineer, my mum had graduated from a hydro construction faculty). My parents did end up living in destitute poverty, as in having to get back to literally subsistence agriculture in order to survive, but that only came in the second part of the '90s, once democracy had already been in place for a few good years (and democracy had come with privatizations and price liberalizations).
Average Russian ranked in top 30 for standard of livings and in the first two decades after the war gdp grew more than in US. Richer countries like baltics ranked among the top 20 at times during soviet times. It was definitely not even in all soviet countries and regions, but that's not unlike other countries or regions.
(not agreeing with them, just pointing to the fact)
Search Term : Result
Life expectancy Russia 1990 : 68.89
Life expectancy Russia 2019 : 73.08
For reference, in the US:
Life expectancy US 1990 : 75.21
Life expectancy US 2019 : 78.79
I dunno nothing really stands out. It looks like Russians benefited a little bit more, but Americans were starting from a higher baseline so it makes sense that gains would be harder to come by.
2019 was selected rather than 2021 for obvious reasons.
I think that's overstating the case. In fact the "average Russian person" was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold war, and none of that meaningfully changed with the advent of a market economy. Except that Russians of the 2000's could get eat better food and watch (much) better TV.
It's absolutely true that most of the western aid ended up hurting and not helping. But the bar was very, very low to begin with.