@Easterners: Thanks again to all of you who are out there and/or who have responded to this thread so far. I always wondered what you fine people are like, and now I can know.
I have to apologize for the gratuitous music and Randian references, but they are part of my mental game. I believe that Rand, though effective at communicating ideas, sometimes talked in hyperbole; she believed that Soviet citizens "starved while waiting for tractors and electricity... still starved while waiting for space flight and atomic power..." Maybe she was bitter because her family lost everything to Lenin?
I vastly prefer finding out what Russian / Eastern European life is like now, to reading about what it used to be in the days of Marxism. If I had unlimited money, I'd travel there for certain. The cultural attractions of Saint Petersburg and Moscow must be incredible. Maybe you don't have the sex tourism of the Low Countries, but I've learned that there are young people who have "priorities of free speech and free sex", according to Penthouse when I was in high school in the '90s.
Did anyone in Russia ever listen to Korrozia Metalla [check spelling] back in the day?