It's interesting what your saying, about retirement how ever your forgetting murfeys law! (if something can go wrong it will) if sercomstances arise where you for no reason of your own you end up with no cash for you pension then your left with two choises work till you drop (not for me thanks!) or clame off the state.

Your right there! You only have to look at the 1930s to see this where Russia took all the food from Ukraine and caused a famin

Not many places on earth that are doing well and Russia doesn't even have the obobo careless system to kill you early.

Russia will never be concerned about it's people. It has been exhibited numerous times over history. They care about territory, not people.

so what you do is take over other countries and loot them to keep the system going. That was the whole idea of the USSR, and now the russian federation, and also china. One has to wonder about human nature, in that power and control seem to be born or bred into us.

Russia and Germany are basically warlike cultures. Russia would starve its people in order to have money for guns and expansionism. The expansionist part of it allows them to keep the ball rolling while they loot the wealth of the lands they take over.

Bingo. What most do not realize is that Russia never recovered from their collapse back in the 1980's. Why? Because it did not effect structural change in their system of government to support a market economy. The names may have changed slightly, but you still have the same system of oligarchs running the nation aided by the enforcers in the Secret Police.

Those who complain about the 1% in America are blind when they compare that to Russia. Russia has almost zero middle class.

The worst thing facing Russia is an increase in American energy products, especially natural gas. Putin was looking for his EU gas deal to become a real cash cow, with Russia controlling the price of energy across Europe, but America produces natural gas almost without trying, and looks like it will keep the worldwide price under control with exports.

If Trump isn't sabotaged by the left, he could really force Russia to pull back from its adventurism. Reducing involvement in foreign wars would enable them a better focus on the needs of their own people. The question is whether they need a new leader to achieve this.

Promise more than is available to deliver.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Socialism in any form has not worked very well for any country that tried it. Even the PRC has had to abandon it to some extent.
Russia faces some of he same problems it faced when runn the USSR . She coundn't solve them then and can't now. Putin's world view is essentially Socialist/Communist and he can't shake it. Both work until you run out of other peoples money. Then they crash.

Russia does face one major hurdle in that arena: their currency isn't a global currency like the US $ or the EU (or now the Chinese yuan). If they try to inflate their way out of trouble, they'll sink their economy and force another revolution. Their petroleum exports are the only thing keeping them afloat at the moment.