I do remember that in the 90s the "russia understanders" were split into two camps: now that russia is free of the shackles of communism it will step into its destiny as supreme global superpower vs the soviet system was actually quite effective at large scale mundane infrastructure & logistics in a way the russian federation isn't.

By 2000 the weight of evidence was already fairly strong for the second view but this disaster, and especially their response to it, really settled the matter. This is how I remember feeling about it all anyway.