There was of course another brief period of democratic possibility after the fall of the CPSU in the early 90s. Before Putin and the gangster capitalists got cracking.
You missed out the important section in between where the democratic reformers like Yeltsin and Gorbachev basically imported "Liberalism", "Capitalism" and "Democracy" on a society that did not have the support structures for it and took a hammer blow to everything they had built over 50 years leading to the economy imploding and the country collapsing leading to the rise of the Oligarchs who gobbled up state wealth. Not to mention Yeltsin bombing his own parliament with tanks.
Whilst Putin is probably corrupt (as is every politician in a democracy as well) he brought stability to a country on the verge of anhilating itself into oblivion brought an end to the gangster rule of the mob. People who remember that era will always back Putin.
This guy Nalvany or whatever is on record calling Muslims cockroaches and is a "Nationalist" as well who is pro-gun :
https://www.ft.com/content/c3adf28c-07d0-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7ddThis is a great reformer? Has the West learned nothing from the failed Arab spring? It is madness how long this hubris will continue to go on far. Let Russia be Russia, leave them alone, stop encroaching on their "near-abroad" and they will leave the West alone. Simple!
Stalin only second to probably Hitler in mass murder, Putin perhaps the biggest thief in history.
"Probably" is not good enough when discussing serious issues like this. Churchill was "probably" responsible for one of the biggest genocides in history [Bengal famine] worse than Pol Pot.
I will not defend Stalin but if you want to point out all the flaws of Russian civilization then the elephant in the room remains : The reform of Western Europe was fueled with mercantlism, resource extraction from the rest of the world, racial supremacy and dummy capitalism with countries forced open as false markets. [This continues to this day with France controlling the CFA franc in a futile attempt to re-create a French empire whilst pointing the finger at China].
Russia pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and China is following. Concepts of Marxist-Lenninism is making a comeback under Xi and America is imploding. May we live in interesting times.