Kremlin's defined limits

One of the abiding mysteries of the post-1991 era is the economic failure of the successor states to the Soviet Union. Why didn't Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and others become economic powerhouses?

At first glance, they possessed many of the required prerequisites. The apparent political constraints to entrepreneurship had been removed. Many of them had good industrial bases. They all had superior education systems, highly educated workforces with favourable labour arbitrage due to relatively low wages, and also ample mineral wealth distributed across many places.

They should have been well positioned to climb the ladder as India, Bangladesh, Vietnam,