I can remember the first Clive Cussler book I ever read, “Raise the Titanic”. It had this memorable line in it in which a heroine was upbraiding the Russian villains about their “threadbare county”. Later on, when I was in the Army, I remember what a business we made out of the Soviet armed forces, and only a few years later when the Soviet Union fell and we found out what a hollow shell those armed forces were, with broken, rusting equipment and alcoholic draftee troops (for the most part).
And here we are, waiting for the Winter Olympics to start, and we find out that, after all the time that has passed, it’s still the same old Russia, but with shiny new toilets (no partitions), open manholes and flooded everythings.