It's true that university-educated intellectuals who have fled Eastern Europe after communism ended have, as a social class, done fairly well for themselves, but have you ever visited the... Less cosmopolitan parts of the former USSR?

It's not quite life-on-the-reservation out there, but it's not far from it.

They were never any good, and as soon as the planned economy stopped pouring money and work/busy-work into those areas, they all went straight to shit.