Interesting conversation. My thoughts:
(1) Perceptions are reference dependent on context in time and place. The traumas of the 'shock therapy' during the 1990s colored the public's perception of the time before it - same way conservative politics today in the United States mythologize the 1950s despite the Red Scare, segregation, and so on. The reference point also does the same for experiences gained afterwards; if the first experience with democratic capitalism is chaotic, perceived to be unjust, and difficult, then alternatives will be welcomed.
(2) The liberals/Westernizers in the early 1990s of the Yeltsin administration made great efforts in integrating Russia into the West's model of a Westphalian nation-state committed to democratic capitalism. It held elections. It sold off state property. It abandoned Russia's historical empire, creating numerous states of the dominant nations. This trend only tampered off recently, even the Putin administration pushed for Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization.
(3) Yes, the West did dismantle the Russian empire (there are 15 states where there used to be one, in addition to the former Warsaw Pact states). The problem is that the West never fully embraced Moscow, and Yeltsin's poor performance never met the challenges posed by the realists and nationalists. Russia's experiences with Yugoslavia, Kosovo, shock therapy, NATO expansion, and missile defense only empowered the realists and nationalists, and the second economic crisis in the late 1990s finally pushed Russian politics in their favor.
(4) Yeltsin virtually abdicated to Putin, paving the way for a relatively peaceful transition from the Westernizers to the Realists. During Putin's early years, he still had some of the same ambitions as his predecessor, but the abandonment of the democratic-capitalism project was necessary to save what the realists and nationalists believed to be at risk at the time: the very existence of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the wars in Chechnya and Dageston were traumatic events from this perspective. All of Russia's wars from 1991 to 2014 involve former Soviet republics and all of them involve questions of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. These conflicts are a direct result of the dismantling of the Soviet empire - the very policy advocated here (and initially opposed by the Bush I administration).
(5) So, collapse of the USSR was a decentering of political power away from Moscow - and this triggered political and economic crisis throughout the entire post-Soviet region (it also untethered the international security regime from the bipolarity of the Cold War, making life more complicated for everyone). The West and some of those post-Soviet states took full advantage of this opportunity to make a clean break from Moscow. Good for them. The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine. Despite it all, Russia has managed to build relatively constructive relations with continental Europe even as the U.S. has been generally confrontational and suspicious of Russia's efforts.
(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).
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