Putin insinuates that the U.S. has ever meddled in the Russian elections?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
He later publicly thanked US for helping him win.
Complete with advising him as he seized control of the media and used it to spread disinformation, forcing an IMF loan that was then used to buy votes, sending US intelligence agents to Russia, the whole deal.
As for direct electoral fraud, the numbers in the election are incredibly fishy even from our historical viewpoint, was fraught with irregularities, much, much less than in the Bolivian elections that the US called illegitimate. This hypocrisy is yet more meddling.
The Communist Party was in the process of decentralizing the economy and increasing democracy. Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev drove Russia so far into the ground that it is worse than the RSFSR in every single measurable way.
If the people want to elect a Communist Party which agrees to respect elections, who are you to say that they're not allowed and to meddle in their elections?
Focusing on one or two indicators is misleading, on all macro indicators rapid liberalization under Yeltsin has been an unmitigated disaster Russia still hasn't recovered from. Literally millions of excess deaths have happened because of it.
You could just ask a Russian person who lived 1991 as an adult for their opinion, if you want subjective and anecdotal evidence. I know I did.
Finally, a 3 hour queue for food, which was fairly rare under the USSR anyways, is better than dying at the age of 40 from deaths of despair, which you would have a two-digit percentage chance of doing as a Russian male after 1996.
>more than 30% of deaths in 2012 in Russia were attributable to alcohol
Deaths due to alcoholism are, of course, deaths of despair.