I think the story here is simpler and more complex at the same time.
When the cold war has ended the West has assumed that:
- the looser would behave as a looser should (as it was assumed that "Russia" lost the cold war).
- that Russia would soon follow the Western rules of the game and would be succeptable to the Western mentality.
- would quitely grow and would never fully recover.
This is not what happened. The reasons for this are many, the obvious ones are that Russia has viewed the results of the cold war differently and that Russia has a very different, eastern christian mentality/cultural heritage. If you are interested in further reading you can use this article:
http://pozneronline.ru/2014/03/7200/
It is writen by an independent journalist and was originally published in the opposition's media outlet (the Echo of Moscow radiostation).