Terrible, they asked the US for financial assistance.
It was an unequal exchange of goods and services. The government was basically enforcing slave labor.
well simply because it is part of the Communist ideology (everything should be owed, set by the state).
Russia had a totalitarian ecomomy while they were part of the Soviet Union.
The effect of gorbachevs reforms, which resulted in the forming of independence movements which allowed yeltsin to jump in