I don’t think USSR became what anyone in the west wanted it to become.
Who is Yeltsin?
It’s nowhere near neoliberal, for one, more like a mafia state.
Technically it quickly became something closer to classically liberal rather than neoliberal (as the imperial core shunned it) but to claim that liberalism is opposed to mafiosi is hilarious, it has never existed without them. It’s like saying liberalism is opposed to slavery, there is some vacuous sense in which you could use sophistry to push that angle, but when you look at real, historic manifestations of liberal states, they are heavily economically reliant on various forms of slavery, whether domestic or via their dogs in the third world.
Who is Yeltsin?
Technically it quickly became something closer to classically liberal rather than neoliberal (as the imperial core shunned it) but to claim that liberalism is opposed to mafiosi is hilarious, it has never existed without them. It’s like saying liberalism is opposed to slavery, there is some vacuous sense in which you could use sophistry to push that angle, but when you look at real, historic manifestations of liberal states, they are heavily economically reliant on various forms of slavery, whether domestic or via their dogs in the third world.