>>17829625
It wasn't just Yeltsin. The issue is when the government isolated people from the West, the more they were attracted to it. The higher the wall, the more you want to peek over. This was a paradoxical and counter-productive thing that communists governments did. If you had a candy wrapper from the West, that was like an ultra-rare Pepe meme and you would be the coolest kid at your school. There was enormous attraction and weird fandoms that developed over that stuff:
https://youtu.be/-1rxg0YrPRE

Flip it around. It's not that different from liberal bureaucrats in Western countries being like RUSSIA BAD. Don't listen to Russian propaganda! Well, whaddya mean I can't listen to Russian propaganda? I WANT to listen to Russian propaganda!!! But in reality, it's not like Russia is all that it's cracked up to be either, or people are getting a very selective image of it, or what they want to see. Back in the 1980s, there were Soviet dissidents (although they didn't like to call themselves "dissidents" because that's a negative term) who'd move to Brighton Beach in NYC and they'd become disillusioned with American-style freedom. It was just too chaotic and wild and you're just on your own.