Perhaps you could ask this in /r/AskReddit? Since this's a situation in many people's living memory, I think you could get very interesting answers there.

Well, I can tell you the results of the collapse. Before 1992, 3 out of 4 people still wanted the structure of the Soviet Union. It's collapse was a shock to everyone including their citizens. The collapse sealed it's fate when the soviet military attempted a coup d'état on Gorbachev to save the nation. It failed. It's ironic that a failed coup, which was enacted to save the Soviet Union, destroyed the Soviet Union.

Anyway, after the collapse, there was a feeling of uncertainty floating around. Inflation rose to the double digits, and corruption was everywhere. I'll finish this post when I get back home as my phone is on 2%

EDIT: On my computer now. Anyways, corruption was everywhere. The Soviet Navy either sold their ships/submarines, or simply left them for disrepair. The mafia took over in many places and demanded "protection money." Birth rate declined, annual income fell, etc. This did not stabilize until Putin came around to turn everything around at the turn of the century.

I want to reiterate that anecdotal answers are against the rules of the sub. I realize many readers here lived through this event and probably remember it quite well, but it's still not an appropriate top-level comment. The fact is that we have no way of verifying who you are or if your experience is genuine. Answers here should draw from external sources.

David Hoffman's The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia discusses the growth of non-state industry and, particularly, the private banking sector.

It also has interesting information on the growth of Ponzi schemes in just-post-Soviet-Russia -- in a society where advertising wasn't common, it was fairly trivial to hoodwink the Russian masses into buying worthless pieces of paper. It also discusses Russian hyperinflation (25% inflation per month) and the effect this had on the average Russian (that is, that one's life savings would be worthless in less than a year).