“When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble.”

An economic collapse of your system will do that.

“There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.”

This was true for the nomenklatura in the USSR. The Soviet nations weren’t any less corrupt or any more competent than anyone else has been.