As in any other country, it depends on who you are and what you do. If you have friends or relatives in other countries, where you have access to outside ideas, your chances are greater of adapting and being successful. Young people are very resourceful and very creative at either making a life for themselves, or finding their way out of the country. The people who really suffer are the seniors who don't have a way to retrain and rely on their pensions, sometimes as low as $30 a month. Utilities cost more than that. Many seniors are begging in the streets. There are no laws against discrimination, and most jobs are asking for people less than 40 yrs. of age.
The local saying is, "During communism, we had money and there was nothing available to buy. Now everything is available, but there is no money."
Moscow is now the most expensive place on Earth to live. People who were in high positions during communism, continue to do well as long as they don't step on too many toes. Some have done extremely well. The problem is that the changes are happening faster than the legal system can keep up, so there are no property rights laws and no one seems to be working on that. So whatever you happen to earn, if you make the wrong people mad, they can take it all away from you and you can't take them to court over it. Posession is 9/10 of the law, and the one with the bigger stick has posession. But the corruption is getting much better than it used to be, but still horrendous by US standards.
It's very safe for tourists, unless you're a journalist, looking to run a story to expose corruption, then you're likely to get whacked
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