They still have roughly the amounts of civil liberties and freedom of the press is greatly limited. Putin is turning into more of an autocrat with each passing day and there's still some branch of secret police.

In addition to this, there is much less job security and the opening of the borders (although beneficial for trade) has led to some areas being rife with the AIDS virus and drug problems.

So did the Russian's (and all regions which were part of the USSR) benefit from the fall of Communism?

Benefit as in having less of an oppressive system and more civli liberites? Yes. Although I'm curious where you get the idea that they have the same ammount of civil liberties as before?

When it comes to Russia I think the proper question to ask is if they'd been better off with the centralized, statist communism rather than an imperfect, autocratic capitalist market economy. Let's face it: Russia is far from perfect when it comes to democracy and protecting the individuals rights, but would the have fared better under the previous system? Probably not, even though we can't know how far Gorbatjev could've gone with his perestrojka and glasnost.

Job security is a matter for the state to tend to. The problem Russia is facing is that the wealth is concentrated into far to few hands, and that these few hands are also by far too intertwined on several different levels of the government. Take into account that there hasn't really been any form of market based "welfare system" previously and you can imagine the problem that arises when you're trying to shift from one type of social structure to a radically different one. Whereas most other countries with some kind of welfare system have worked out the kinks, broadly speaking, whether it's almost completely market based such as in the USA or GB, state centered as in the Nordic countries or based around the family such as in southern europe, Russia went from essentially none to a completely state centered one based on principles of centralized economic planning. With the centralized ecnonomy gone, well, the results are in.

In short, there are enourmous ammounts of kinks to work out but all in all, yes they're better off now than before.

The civil liberties was comparing to Soviet Government in the late 80s rather than Stalin's era and such which would of been a silly comparison. Putin is not really such a strong believer in democracy or liberty which he continues to demonstrate what was the phrase ah yes, 'Political tyrany excercised by moral despots'.

It's pretty obvious that Russia and Russians have benefited substantially from the collapse of Communist Party rule. While Russian government remains fairly authoritarian, it is considerably more open and accountable now than it was even under the last years of Gorbachev, and Russian citizens enjoy a much more open society than they did under the Soviets.

And that, of course, is to leave aside discussion of the massive economic growth Russia has enjoyed under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.

The story is a little less consistent among other former Soviet Republics. Certainly, most of the European former territories have enjoyed some increase in civil liberties and economic growth (though nothing that matches Russia), but the Central Asian republics, in particular, have lapsed into extremely inefficient dictatorships that are worse than late communism by pretty much any measure. These countries have also suffered greatly on the economic front, as money that used to be made in Russia is no longer being poured into outlying regions by the government in Moscow.

There is no doubt that Russia under Putin's rule has become and autocratic state, but that was followed by the increase in economic strength ; I hope no one will try to deny this. The civil society has also become stronger than it was during the Gorbatchov's and Elcin's reign. These two figures believed in liberalism with minimal state interference, and what did they end up with ? The first failed to save USSR, the second nearly lost Russia. Russia is a big state and one cannot let the market decide everything.

Compared to late Soviet years Russian Federation indeed benefited from the downfall of the communist system. Russia is an example of a more or less pure capitalism - If you got money you can do anything. And the laws are in some cases far for more liberal than the ones in USA.