This is a good history lesson but one part is missing: The part where the IMF and The World Bank promised $ to Russia to rebuild as a democracy (after we helped them destroy their own institutions) and then we reneged and gave them nothing.

The entire debacle is well-researched and written about in Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine.

This is where the hatred of the West really comes from--we screwed them over completely.

It was done because US political elites realized that if we helped Russia rebuild they might become stronger than us. So we lied to them. Then we watched them fall apart.

And all the while we were claiming that Russians can't understand democracy. We could have taught them but instead we helped the oligarchs steal what resources they could and left them in chaos so they would not be a threat to the U.S. That's the real story here.